Think Like A Game Designer - Think Like a Game Designer #34: Mike Turian

Episode Date: December 27, 2021

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Hello and welcome to Think Like a Game Designer. I'm your host, Justin Gary. In this podcast, I'll be having conversations with brilliant game designers from across the industry, with a goal of finding universal principles that anyone can apply in their creative life. You could find episodes and more at think like a game designer.com. For we get into today's episode, I want to prime everybody because for those of you that have wanted to get into the Think Like a Game Designer Masterclass, there's a new opportunity coming in preparation for 2022. we're going to be offering a new version of the course that's bigger than better than ever.

Now, all the principles that I've talked about here on this podcast and in my book are not only reflected in the course, but those are doubled down on. We have behind the scenes videos of the masterminds that have participated, the actual live discussions and coaching. You'll be able to work directly with me and my team from Stoneblade on your games and your concepts. And even more powerfully, you'll have access to a exclusive discord with all of your fellow students. and former students that really gives an incredible community, a bunch of people to help playtest your games, a really fun, vibrant way to create that accountability, that community, that support, that iteration loop

that's absolutely critical to be able to make your games a success. I have found no better way in all of my years doing this than to get people ready and to get their games going, including setting up pitch scheduling days and everything else, then the master class, and we are going to be running the best version of it that we have ever run very soon. So I will talk more about this on the podcast, but if you want to be the first to know when this is coming,

then you can go to think like a game designer.com and click to sign up and you'll be on the email list so you will be the first to know and get access. In today's episode, I speak with Mike Turian. Mike is a Magic the Gathering Hall of Fame champion and the current product architect for Magic to Gathering. Mike has the unique experience of being on nearly every side of the success of Magic, from pro player to marketing manager to game developer to digital product manager. Now, I've known Mike for many, many years from our days back on the Pro Tour. And he has always been one of my favorite people to hang out with and talk to. Because in addition to being brilliant, he is just one of the nicest guys I have ever encountered. And this podcast came about because I was spending some time up in Seattle with friends.

And Mike and I got to chatting. And I was just struck again by how much I loved chatting with him. We used to get to do it all the time by default on the Pro Tour. But since he's been working at Wizards, I don't get to see him as often. And so, you know, we got about an hour into our conversation. I was like, you know what, I would love to be able to do this on the podcast because I want to share this insight with everybody else. And of course, Mike agreed, which was fantastic. And really, he delivered here, right?

Not only get to kind of have the fun that I did, get in a chat with him and hear all the good that comes out of it, but you can really hear about how decisions get made behind the scenes at a giant company like Wizards of the Coast. And I found a lot of the stuff to be really fascinating, right? They're focused on trying to keep iterations and make decisions quickly even inside of a giant bureaucracy, right? the way that they think about play testing and the way they think about customer research and trying to build games that are going to have giant audiences that are very multicultural and are going to try to bring in different licenses and the kinds of decisions about how you manage a brand is all stuff that Mike gives a lot of great insight on here.

And this can be really impactful to you even if you're just starting off and you've got a small game and a small audience, those types of decisions about how you build for iterations, how you get feedback can matter. And of course, when you're planning to make a game that's going to be big and reach millions of people and have the kind of enduring success that Magic has, these kinds of lessons are critical. So I love chatting with Mike. I was really glad to get to do this. And I will just say one more thing here.

Mike talks about it in the podcast, but he's done a lot of work for the extra life charity. As part of, you know, he inspired me to be able to give a donation to that group. There'll be more information when Mike talks about it later. But if you at all are inspired to do so, it's a wonderful thing. You can donate. Please tag Mike or I on Twitter to let us know because I think he does a lot of work. I'd love to see this podcast be another way that we can do some more good in the world,

add some extra donations, and continue to spread the love and spread the joy of the gaming community elsewhere. So without any further ado, I'm now going to let Mike Turian speak for himself. Hello and welcome. I am here with Mike Turian. Mike, it's good to be with you, buddy. Justin, it's great to be here talking with you too. I'm super excited. Yeah, yeah. You know, we have been friends for a very long time, and we're going to get into your background story, but it certainly overlaps a lot with mine. We met and continued to hang out for quite a while on the Magic Pro Tour. And you and I have not seen each other as much over the last several years since you've been working for Wizards of the Coast and building the products that I know and love. it was great. We got when I was up in Seattle a few months ago, we got to spend some more time together. And I realized, you know, it's been too long. We've had a good deep dive conversation. So I figured why not do that and share it with all of our listeners?

It sounds fun. Yeah, it was great getting to see you, I think, over the summer. And, you know, I've been a big fan of enjoying listening to your podcast. I think, you know, the design insights I hear on it are just, you know, often so spot on. and it's great to be a part of that. Yeah, well, it's awesome too because I really like to bring in a lot of different perspectives, right? And of course, when it comes to magic or bringing in, you know, a lot of the people who are most influential to make it happen. We've had Richard Garfield on here twice. We've had, you know, Mark Rosewater on here. We've had a lot of the key people.

And I think that with your role and your influence on it is maybe less known, but no less impactful. So I kind of tease that, you know, we were going to start with their origin. story, but maybe just like, fill people in a little bit right now. What is your, what is your role right now and kind of how do you view that in light of, you know, sort of the game that we all know and love? Yeah, so my title at Wizards is product architect for Magic the Gathering. What that, what that ends up meeting, you know, from, it's, it's very much in the product design space, right? Like Magic has, we come out with lots of products every year, and I'm really the one responsible for helping craft the vision of what those products are, you know, working with the creative designers, working with the game designers, and then taking that vision and sort of carrying it throughout the company and then even, you know, to our players, right? So for instance, one thing that as we speak is upcoming is the Dracula series card in Crimson Val.

Like, I'm a huge piece of putting that type of promotion together and then also figuring out, hey, where do the Dracula series cards show up? How do they show up in the products? What products are we doing for Crimson Val and so forth? recently somebody after I talked about it like this, they're like, oh, so you're kind of the general manager for the product. And it's a description that I thought was pretty apt. So that's sort of another way to think about what I do. There's a lot that goes into making magic. And I love getting, you know, to be a part of so much of that. Yeah. So then Let's use that as a cue to go back in time then, because I want to dig in deeply into what it means to design products and how that process works.

But, you know, as I kind of started to talk about, right, you and I first met on the Magic Pro Tour, we kind of cut our teeth in a lot of ways that way. What got you interested in games, kind of what was the path that brought you, you know, A, I guess, to the Pro Tour and where we met all the way to kind of now working on products? Well, I mean, I've always, you know, since I was a kid, I've loved playing board games specifically. You know, like my dad and I would get together and play Access and Allies. We'd play a choir. We'd play all sorts of, you know, and of course, you know, Monopoly-style games, right, that were popular, depending on how old I was at the time. But I quickly graduated, I'll say, from Monopoly to these other style of games.

And by the time, and then another big piece of my growing up was I was a big fan of baseball and sports and baseball cards, right? So one of the guys that also liked to collect baseball cards, we went to the summer leadership training. And it was a week-long thing. And on Monday, he was like, Mike, you got to come out, check out this game. And I'm like, no thanks. And on Tuesday, he asks. And on Wednesday he asks. And so finally, I'm like, okay, he's asked me like every day.

You know, and I had two more days of this training with him. I'm like, fine. I'll go down to the local card store. It was called Legends Sports Cards. And I bought a starter deck of revised at the time. And that's like, that was my first experience. And to me, coming from this background of, like, board games have a very fixed set of components, a very fixed set of rules.

And Magic just upended all of that. It was just, I mean, mind blowing the way that, oh, you. could build new decks and there was new cards that would come out and there was new combinations of cards right and um and every game was was really so different uh i i fell in love basically right away uh and and then i taught my dad i taught my sister i taught my cousins my friends like i was definitely uh a huge advocate of both playing magic and evangelizing magic um early on and then uh So from there, I found out about tournaments. I think I bought my first cards, and I think it was August of 1994.

I think in November of 94, I played in my first tournament. It was, of course, what was known at the time as type 1. Now it would be called vintage. And it was an 80-person tournament, and I came in second place. And I was like, oh, okay, like, I had only been playing for a few months, and so to do so well. And then over the course of the next couple years, I started playing a lot and eventually would win pro tour qualifiers and come in top eight at Grand Prix Toronto. And that would get me to my first pro tour, which was Pro Tour Chicago and 97, I think.

Yeah, it's funny how much these early years of magic influenced so many of us. as the overwhelming majority of people I speak with, largely depending upon how old they are, that become game designers or in the field, either got hooked on Dungeons and Dragons first or magic. And I think the beauty of both of those is the thing that hooks the kind of people that design games is that what you mentioned,

which is that open-endedness of it, right? The fact that you're crafting the experience and the rules, even as you get ready to then play the game itself. And I think that modularity and that creativity is just such an important seeding ground for then, you know, being able to design games or design products in games along those lines. Well, yeah, I mean, and I think too, I mean, because at the time I started playing, I was in high school. And, you know, the American high school education system, I'll say it's fairly rigid, right? It's like, oh, there's right and wrong answers on this test. you need to do your homework and turn in projects.

And once again, you know, a lot of times there's, I'll say, an answer key. And in many of the games I had played up until that point, also very much had that same, I'll say once again, answer key, right, feeling to them. And that just wasn't the case with magic, right? Like, it's like, oh, you know, not that booster draft existed, but booster draft quickly became my favorite format once I think I first did them around the time of Mirage's release. And it's like every experience is totally different.

Your opponents' cards are different. Your cards are different. Like as the draft goes on, your strategies change and evolve. And the same is true and constructed as well. And yet it's still on you, right? And so it's just, it was such a divergence from, I'll say, the right answer to, you know, this world that has depth. And, you know, it's really a game that sort of captures, I think, a lot closer to, I'll say, a real world experience of, hey, when you're out and about in the world, sure, there are laws that you need to abide by.

But it's very open-ended, right? Like, what you do when you wake up is every day is your choice to make. And I love that in games when it really can capture that in the same. open-ended way. Yeah, I mean, we had, I had a Raff Koster on the podcast a while ago was one of my early guests because he was one of the people that influenced me most when it came to the theory of game design and why we play games and theory of fun is his book that's very accessible, you know, largely it's like a picture book that explains this principle, but the, you know, the heart of why we play games in the first place is that this idea of learning, that

it creates these simulations, these safe ways that we can explore. the world around us and learn these principles. And that's what makes us want to play. That was what makes us want to play games. And when you have these kinds of games like magic, where they're games of uncertain information, where the rules can change and what's important, what matters changes, right?

That was one of the things when you were playing at a high level in magic tournaments. You had to figure out what matters here, right? Are we racing for life total? Are we trying to get maximized card advantage? Are we trying to like control for the late game? is man of the primary resource, right? And each game that would change and being able to determine what's important

and optimize for that on the fly without knowing for sure what was in your opponent's hand or what cards you were going to draw next is such a great parallel for so many of the things in life, like, referencing your comments about, you know, school and being, you know, for me as an entrepreneur, there's always that question of like, what's the important area to focus on? What is it that you need to be optimizing for? And it's never totally clear. You never have that clean cut, perfect information to say,

okay, this is clearly the optimized answer. And so those skills have proven incredibly valuable, not just in the craft of making games, but also just business and life in general. Yes, yes, for sure. Yeah, I think that it's, you know, one of the things I like to say is we make it all up. And I think that's important to recognize of, like you say,

Like when you're thinking about, you know, how you want to prioritize your time or your money, it's just like, oh, there's, you know, often the conventional wisdom, which I think can be a great thing to follow at times. There's certainly value to following convention. But then, you know, I mean, there's a reason that we talk about thinking outside the box, right? And really what that's saying is, is like, hey, you can imagine a world in which there is no box. and now now what do you do? How do you proceed? Right? Do you focus on the data? Do you focus on people's stories that they're telling you? Do you, you know, a lot of times you just be inspired, right? And it's like, this is the right thing to do.

Well, how come? It's just like, you know, people will say, my gut tells me to do that. And knowing which of these tactics to use, how to blend them, it ends up really being a key to success. That ends up being hard to describe and hard to pinpoint when other people, you know, inquire more, as it were. Yeah, absolutely. And it's actually one of the interesting things that I've noticed as an important shift.

So maybe you can relate to this because coming from the pro player background, there's this sort of bias, or at least in my own thinking, towards analytical processes, right? trying to be able to logic and reason everything out and calculate the expected value of decision A versus decision B and following that logic wherever it leads. And there's absolutely value to that. But I know as I became more focused on experience design and crafting games as well as those things in my own life, a lot of times it's not about the pure logic analytical. A lot of times it is, as you talked about this, you know, gut feelings or the stories that

people are going to create, right? And the way that you present information and the way that people are going to feel about it is very, very different than what, you know, the math or the logic will say. And then, again, that's sort of true for games and for life, like the stories that you choose to tell and how you choose to relate to them matters as much or more than what any given piece of logic or data is going to point you to. I've both been a product, you know, I'm currently a product architect, a product designer. In the past, I was a, I did game design and led a number of magic sets game design. And one of the things that in both roles that you have to think about is, hey, do I want to make a decision quickly and be successful with a successful decision 60% of the time?

Or is this a place where I'm going to do more research up front, do more deep thinking up front, conversation and get to a successful decision 80% of the time. Now the thing is, and of course, I'm just making up those, the 60 and 80%, the numbers, of course, will vary in any situation. But in the place where you think more quickly and decide more quickly, you also often will have an opportunity to iterate and to say, hey, oh, look, we were in the 40% scenario. This, let's, let's make the other decision and or let's finesse it even further. And so, you know, making it a 60% successful decision and then trying again often will end up being more powerful than a slower, 80% correct, deeper thinking decision that you won't necessarily have time to iterate or change

if it turns out that you're headed in the wrong direction. And so it, It's always just important to really balance those things in any design and in any, in any process to make sure that, you know, when you do reach those forks in the road, that you know which direction is, then which tactic is the best to figure out the right direction. Yeah, and I just want to underscore that principle because the way I look at is trying to avoid analysis paralysis, right? You can think through the number of decisions or the upsides and downsides to a given decision pair pretty much forever. And it's important to know when that analysis needs to stop.

And you also emphasize the importance of iteration and testing, right? When you're designing something new, there is no substitute for iterations. And the core principles that I teach about the core design loop is like you base the, the main predictor of whether you're going to be a good designer or bad designer is how quickly and efficiently can you move through that, you know, ID8 test, prototype test, learn, cycle back circle. The faster you can get to that, the better your products are going to be. The more often you can go through that cycle, the better it's going to be. We can all theorize our way. And the better you get at the job over the long term, the better your initial guesses are likely to be, but that there's just no substitute for testing

and iterating at the end of the day. Yeah, yeah, I like to, the acronym I like to think about is dam, D-A-M, which is defining success, right? And then taking action of like, okay, this is what we're actually going to do, and then measuring, right? And then you basically say, oh, in that measurement, like, do I need to go back to redefine success or do I need to take different action? Or, yeah, this was just successful. Let me move forward.

But you're absolutely right. Like that loop is super valuable. And I can't stress it enough. I recall so many times I would be in meetings with designers debating, oh, which of this magic has lands. And, you know, which should this dual-and cycle do or which should this land cycle do? And, you know, we could spend hours debating the merits, but often, often when we actually prototyped up the cards and played them, it really helped us focus in on,

oh, this is what the right path was all the long. And so a lot of that early discussion really to me is about that definition of success and giving people to say, hey, this cycle should accomplish X or Y. So that way, you know, everyone sort of agrees on, oh, okay, good. But these cars, they're doing the best at hitting, hitting the goals that we've set out for them. Yeah, yeah. I think so this was one of, this may be a good cue in to talk about the next part of your history where you make this transition from being a pro player to being a game designer, even before

you became a product architect. Because I know when I made that transition at first, we fell into the exact trap you're talking about. Like we were there and I was in a room with really, really smart people who were all mostly pro magic players, Dave Humphreys, who you still work with, and is, I think, the lead, lead developer for Magic now, and, uh, you know, Patrick Sullivan and Brian Kibbler and like tons of others, just like really smart, really talented people. And we would just sit in a room and debate the minutia for hours and hours and hours. And I realized at a certain point that the,

uh, our collective brain power was functionally making us all stupider because we would just be so good at debating all these little points that we would not just get things in, to paper form and try it. And we would have learned so much faster. And so that was one of many powerful lessons I picked up, you know, somewhat the hard way going through this for hours and hours over several years, frankly. So maybe that you can speak to that, what that transition process was like for you and maybe some lessons that came in as you go from being a pro player and thinking about

games as a consumer and a player to being a game designer and working with teams and building things that way. Yeah, so 1997 was my first pro tour. I got to team up with Randy Bueller, who went on to become the head of Magic R&D, Eric Lauer, who still works in making magic alongside me. And as you mentioned, Dave Humphreys. And Randy actually won the first pro tour that we playtested for. And, you know, we would write articles. And so over the course of the next seven, eight years, I continued playing a lot of magic.

And in doing a lot of playtesting, Randy actually got hired at Wizards a few years after he won that pro tour. And eventually he would bring me in as a game designer. You know, one of the big things with Magic having a big tournament scene is we always wanted to make sure that the cards were designed and balanced and fun. And so we would always, their Wizards would always be bringing in new, new people from the Pro Tour to help, to help with that design and balance portion. And one of the things that I think talking about that transition, you know, when I joined Wizards in 2004, that was so key was all of that playtesting experience, right? Of course, when we were playtesting for the Pro Tour, it was like the goal was, hey, we each are trying to get better, make ourselves better. and ultimately win the Pro Tour or whatever event we were playing in. And with the game designer, you have to switch that goal, right?

Like all of a sudden now when you're playtesting, like success is not about winning the game, but it's about making a better game, a better experience for all of the players, making sure you capture that resonance. However, that playtest piece, you know, I mean, going back to the point, that playtest piece was really a key. transferable skill that it's like, yes, it's like, sure, the goal has changed, but, you know, from winning to creating a fun game. But how you get there, it's still about that experience, right?

Because a lot of times when you were playing and playtesting to win, it was, oh, yeah, on paper, this card looks like the right card to be including in my deck. But it just, it never works out. And sometimes you eventually put your finger on how come it's not working out. And other times you never do. But the realization of, look, this isn't working. Let's try something different. It's something you need both to help win at games and to make games fun of, oh, here's a mechanic in the set that we thought would really work well.

But, you know, for various reasons, it doesn't. It doesn't have the right synergy. It doesn't have the right connection to the flavor. of the set. And we can do better. So let's do better. And a lot, you know, I'm sure many of your listeners read Mark Rosewater's articles or listen to his mini podcast.

A lot of his best stories and most compelling stories are times when you have that moment of realization of, hey, like, let's take these learnings and use them because we need to make a change. and the learning is what actually, and the change is what takes games from okay games to good games to even great games. Yeah, and you dropped a few principles in there that maybe it's worth breaking out a little bit more, right?

So, you know, we've emphasized maybe some people think to death, but I think it's worth it, you know, this importance of really playtesting and seeing what the results are from actually physically trying things versus just theorizing, but also, you know, not just the idea of something being kind of balanced from a tournament perspective, which is the surface level of what a lot of people think is important. And it is important.

But then this idea of the flavor and the synergies within the set, the, you know, what other things became more apparent to you? And maybe there's a good story to associate with us as you worked behind the scenes and as you're working with these teams that were maybe more important or counterintuitively, more important than you thought they were or less important than you thought they were when you first started designing. I definitely underestimated the power of that, I was like the creative resonance early on. I like to joke and people like to make fun of me because I always would say, oh, I didn't

realize that the magic set invasion from a story perspective was about an invasion. I was just like, you know, and I got to Wizards and someone told me this and I was like, oh, I had no idea. And I think that, you know, because magic has been about, I'll say classic, like its origin was very much in that D&D classic fantasy realm. A lot of the early work were, oh, here's an angel, it's Sarah Angel. and you're like, oh, there's good creative connection to the individual creature types. But as we've gone on, you know, like when working on Caldheim,

it's a set that's really inspired by Viking mythology, you know, working on Midnight Hunt. It's a set inspired by, you know, Gothic horror and werewolves. And so finding more ways to get the design, the mechanics, everything about the set to be oozing the flavor of what that world is about, right? And I think that every time when doing design, it's just, it's a little, it's easy to underestimate that because, I think for one, because it's challenging to hit on the nose, and it's challenging to do right. You know, I'm sure you've experienced many, many playtests of

cards without art and without the actual final names. And so, and I have as well, right, but realizing, oh, in order to get this card right, like, let's spend more time on this connection. One of the things I give Aaron Forsythe, the VP of Magic Design, a lot of credit for, is back when we were working, we were, I think, bringing back the corset. It was like, I think Magic Corset 2010, I believe was the return to the corset. And one of the things I really remember is Aaron printed out and did a design challenge where it was make the most flavorful litch, make the most flavorful vampire, make the most

like, and so there were, you know, nine or 12 or 15 creature types that were printed out. And that was sort of the, that was how that design went of instead of mechanics, first. It was creative first and then making sure the mechanics I'll tie back into it. And I think that's just a really powerful lesson that, you know, a lot of times especially when I, you know, once again, I'm still very much into board games. And I'll say I'll play Euro style board games where I feel like I'm moving cogs around. It's like, oh, get a blue cog and trade it for a red cog and then the red cog turns into two greens and you can turn three greens in for a victory point those games often just end up falling flat like i'll play them i'll i'll play them once i'll play them twice

but to me they just will not have the the longevity of some games that are just far more flavorful and far more connected uh as a as a yeah yeah yeah so there's there's so many things i want to say about this. I think, you know, this idea of creative resonance and the flavor and the story of the game kind of coming through is, is I agree. It's something that I was slow to come to also. And I think for listeners out there, you tend, people tend to start in one of two places. There are actually multiple places you can start, but typically speaking, people start in one of two places, which is either they're mechanics first or flavor first designers. And the reason I think you and I, you know, we come from a sort of kind of pro gaming background where the mechanics and the analytical breakdown is critical.

So that's like my place is always from mechanics first. It sounds like that's where you started as well. And so being able to break that habit by forcing yourself to start with story first and flavor first is really powerful. And for those of you out there that are on the opposite train where it's like, hey, this really cool story. And I know from some of the students in my things like Games Hunter class come from this place where they like they have these amazing stories and amazing ideas.

And then the mechanics that fall out of that are just, you know, kind of a jumbled mess, right? It's just like every piece is sort of designed on its own and not cohesive together. And so then for those people, I think the better things like force them to start, start with mechanics first. Like start with the inst, start against your instincts to start training yourself to be better at the other side of it, to make something that is truly magical and truly a great game where the, where the, you couldn't tell where the designer started. It feels like the cohesiveness of the creative and the flavor is phenomenal and the cohesiveness. and synergy of the of the mechanics is phenomenal and it all just blends together. Like those are the designs I know I'm most proud of what I've done and I'm sure it sounds like the same same for you.

Yeah, yeah, for sure it is. And I want to, you know, because I know a lot of your listeners are likely people who are, I'll say, doing it all, right? They're the game designers. They're working on getting their, you know, game to Kickstarter or however they decide to to bring it to market, you know, I think this creative mechanic balance and resonance topic, it extends to the product packaging. It extends to how you talk about your product and how you get people excited about it, right?

Just up and down the line, it's, oh, knowing, I'll say, the heart of what makes your product in your game awesome is so key. I mean, I know it's how come people are like, you know, when they're talking about what's your elevator pitch for a game, a lot of what I think that is really indirectly trying to do is say to the person, hey, you have a minute to talk about your game and your idea. What's your first sentence? Because you're only going to get, you know, a paragraph or two out before your minutes up. and, you know, especially in a world where so many games are coming out, video games, board games, card games, you know, every day, you just don't have the players' attention for very long before they're going to wander off and, you know, click on the next link and visit the next game. Right, right. Yeah, it's the common refrain nowadays, right? In one sense, it's easier than ever to be a game designer because you, the, the, the tools that are available to make games, the lessons that are free and available out there,

the production, you know, Quint on Demand and many cheap ways to get access to production. All that stuff's easier than it's ever been by a lot. But the flip side of that truth is that the discovery process is harder than it's ever been. There's so many games. There's so much noise. There's so many channels.

The ability to break through and get your game noticed and get somebody to pay attention beyond that first sentence is incredibly difficult. And so I echo your sentiment that I always advise designers, no matter where they are, you need to be developing your elevator pitch from the very beginning. If you don't know what that hook is at the very beginning, then you're going to have trouble throughout the design process. Because whenever you're faced with tough decisions, knowing what the core of your game is, the core tension, the core excitement and selling point is going to help you to make those decisions. And it's not to say that you can't change it, right? if you find that the part of the game that's really the most fun is not what you thought that comes from prototyping, you know, it will evolve over time. But knowing that will help you carry

you through not just the design process, but as you said, the packaging design, how you do the marketing. Thinking of it all as the heart of what you do when you design products is critical. And that's why I actually was really particularly excited to have you on the podcast now because you've, you've had this experience from all these different angles, right? So from the player consumer casual, the player consumer as a pro level, then the designer working on games, you know, what we more traditionally think of as the game design part

and now as a product architect. And so, yeah, I'd love the transition and how those design principles work for you now. And what does the process look like? Are you ideating what kind of new product you'd want to see? And then talking to the design here about it,

is it coming at you the other way? Like what does that look like nowadays for you? Well, A lot of times, you know, especially with magic, we're doing, we're tapping into a number of other brands, right? Like we've announced Lord of the Rings that we're doing a set with Lord of the Rings in it. We did for Acoria, which was a set about monsters. We brought in the king of the monsters, Godzilla. you know, like to me, this is the new, the new exciting space.

I mean, of course, there's lots of awesomeness in magic. But it's like, okay, like, how does, what does it mean when magic is meeting these other brands and these other expressions? Like, what is the best way to handle that? And also, what is the best way to make sure that our players know, like, hey, this the product that's intended for me. You know, especially another good, another great thing that magic's really done is, you know, Commander, which has become, you know, one of the favorite formats of our players, right,

over the past, over the past decade. And it just, you know, continues to grow and continues to bring in new players. And Commanders are a really interesting format because, you know, unlike the formats, like when we were playing on the Pro Tour, which were highly competitive, you know, and it's one-on-one. Commander is a multiplayer game. And so, oh, like, how often do we want to be coming out with new Commander decks? Where do those Commander decks, you know, who are they supposed to be connecting with?

Another thing that's become invaluable for me is just working with our market research teams and our consumer insight teams. And because as magic expands and as magic grows, those teams really help us understand, oh, this is what the magic player wants. Like this is the direction our audience is interested in and where we're looking at growing. And so that way we can help blend those learnings of, oh, you know, what? More magic players than ever are, you know, interested in the story. Okay, well, how are we going to get more story into our products? And so those insights really help us when we're building out new products. and then the cards inside of those products as well.

Yeah, again, tons of things I want to pick out here. But let's start with the end here. When you talk about consumer research, right, that's a pretty fuzzy term for a lot of people. I actually just had a conversation with the Brother Wise team about this very topic. And I'm guessing that your approach to this is going to be different than theirs, given your Wizards resources. But what does it mean to say consumer research?

How do you design specific questions? Do you go and work with a firm that tells you what you're supposed to know? Do you what is what is and maybe you could share some of the insights and process here that people maybe don't have access to if they're not behind the scenes where you work? I laugh. I laugh when you talk about talking with an outside firm telling us what we should know. You know, one of the things that's continually true with magic. And I'm sure once again, with your game.

and lots of games is, you know, if one of the challenges is often, oh, the game, the game has an audience and it has a language to it and it has a culture to it that unless somebody is already, I'll say, accustomed to that language and culture, it often is challenging for outsiders to understand the ecosystem because, you know, magic has grown in. become such a thing. Now, to answer the research part, if you go to, you know, we're always fielding different surveys. If you go to magic the gathering.com on any given day, you know, well, I guess on any given day, there's not necessarily a survey up, but we're definitely, you know, we really crave and want players' feedback. And, you know, and of course,

course we get some of that via social media and whatnot, but it's great to have it in sort of the both quantifiable, quantitative and qualitative sources. And so, you know, we are fielding surveys and just have tons and tons of data of, you know, between things like, hey, what was our player's favorite card in a set? What made them excited? What were, their what were their key motivations for buying certain products? What did they think of the aesthetics? And we do that, we'll do that for sets, and then we also do that for magic as a whole, right, understanding, oh, you know, I mean, one of the big ones, of course, in the past couple

years was, how did COVID impact magic play, right? You know, was, you know, of course, like, it's going to put. coach people to MTG Arena, right, and Magic Online some. Oh, but, you know, were people forming, I'll say closed groups of close friends and getting together and playing with them? Or, you know, did they go do other activities? Like, and so basically on any axis, you know, like new players, great. We'll go out and do new player research and try to learn about them. We'll do, you know, Wizards is pushing more and more away from plastics.

You know, Hasbro announced, you know, we're trying to get plastics out of our packaging to just be better environmental partners. And so we do research on the different packaging elements. I mean, I've just scratched a surface of the amount of research and the amount of data that we're gathering. to really help us make informed decisions. Yeah, so then, you know, what I found the couple times when I have been in heavy data mode, right? This was originally when I was doing, we did Soul Forge Digital. We had tons of data on what people were doing.

We see the sum with Ascension Digital too. And then we did a few surveys and things in the past. And I find the data sort of helpful, but I've also found there's this, there's this tragedy of too much data as well, right? You've got a bunch of smart people in a room that have a bunch of data. You can use that data to argue damn near anything. And very often, unless you're doing like a strict AB test, which is often hard to do when you're talking about physical products and surveys, you really don't have a lot of concrete, actionable information that comes out of it.

Do you have you found that same problem or do you have a process for which you can parse this data or is it just, hey, this is just more, you know, gristle for the middle of decision making and we just take it in and it's just part of the part of the puzzle uh i mean i i definitely think that uh that that can always be a challenge right what you're talking about of having i'll say too much data uh you know i i give a lot of credit to our our insights teams uh the in terms of the organization and i think also another thing is just having baselines having historicals, right? Like some of the, some of the set-based assessments I'm talking about, magic has been, you know, magic itself has been around for 25 plus years, right? And, you know,

some of these, the surveys and whatnot have been going for not that whole time, but a lot of that time. And so those type of, I'll say, baselines, and it just helps get to get a group understanding of what expectations are and what success looks like. Because you're right. I mean, you know, a lot of times you'll just independently, you'll be like, oh, this, this tested a a 3.8 out of five. And it's like, okay, is that good? Is that bad? I mean, I know, I know if it was a five, it'd be pretty clear.

But like, what does it mean to be a 3.8? Right. And that's when you can go around and around. However, when it's like, oh, look, yep, this, this treatment here was a 3.8. And, you know, that's the best, that's the best all year. Right. All of a sudden, it gives you a good, you know, those. comparisons quickly can help, I'll say, focus the conversation on like, oh, all right, well, that's, you know,

well, that's unexpected. We didn't think that it would be the best all year, but now let's start talking about how come, what went right, what, you know, what do we think happened here, right? And of course, too, I mean, I'll say that, you know, there's a lot of open end comments and perusing those can often, you know, help bring, that's, you know, the qualitative and the quantitative matching, that can also be really powerful and break out of that gridlock of just too much data. Yeah, yeah, I think that's great. So if I were going to break down and please correct me if I'm wrong, some principles here that people could apply, you know, when it comes to, you know, take the time to survey your

audience, if you have a small audience or just people you can do this, you know, on social media or whatever platforms you have, you don't necessarily have to have some big firm to do a formal test. Try to ask specific questions, right? So you talked about things like, you know, packaging or fonts or theme and, you know, really to give yourself an opportunity to break out the different elements that you might be interested in. Try to, you know, make these surveys happen over time so you could better make comparisons, even if you can't do a strict A, B test in the moment. You could do it over time and with different elements to help make things that are that'll compare and try to gather both qualitative and quantitative information so that you can see let people tell you what

they want to say uh in addition to kind of dialing in some of the specific metrics that you're looking for yeah yeah i think that's all i think that's all spot on just and and one thing i also want to add to that is, you know, one thing I see, one mistake I see amateur game designers make is they're always in the room, right? And it's not, often it's just out of practicality of like, oh, you need to learn the game from, like, oh, I have this prototype. I want us to play it. Okay, now I want to get your feedback. But remember, like a lot of times, you're playing with your friends. You're playing with people who are, I'll say, design, who are incentivized to tell you, this was fun. I had a good time because they want to remain your friend and they want you to be

encouraged. And, you know, and of course, in some ways, that is encouraging. In other ways, it's doing you a disservice because, you know, it's really speaking back to the pro tour days. I remember talking to John Finkel, who's arguably the best magic player of all time. And, you know, he was really talking about how two of his teammates, Dan O'Mahoney-Schwarz and Stephen O'Mahoney-Schwarz, were so valuable to him because they would tell him the truth, right? Like, they recognized both that he was the best magic player of all time or one of them, but also that he was fallible. And so keeping that in mind of, oh, how are you biasing your survey and your data, right?

Whether that's just by bringing in preconceived notions or, as I was mentioning at the start of this, just being in the room with the people that you're looking for feedback for can definitely lead you astray. Yeah, yeah. I've talked about this on a couple of other podcasts. one of my favorites to refer people back to is Eric Lang's podcast where he will evoke negative responses pretty aggressively. But I do think that the couple times where I've been able to do the classic kind of one-way mirror tests have been unbelievably valuable where you can actually watch people botch your game in ways that are so frustrating, but you can't stop them and thus you learn a lot more. And so this remote survey is another good way to do that. people will be more direct, we'll just say, through an online form or when you're not in the

room than when you're just standing there as the designer. So those are great, great insights. I'm going to tell my favorite one-way mirror story. So we, of course, like we, we were testing a starter product. This was now decades ago for magic. And it was, was a one-way mirror situation, right? So we have, we brought in two teenagers, and for the experiment, we told the researcher who would go in and give them the product. Okay, tell them to do, to act naturally, tell them to do, you know, just whatever they would do when they're at home. And so, the research, you know, they follow our instructions, and they drop off these two starter decks, and they tell the teenage, I think they were teenage boys, like, hey,

you know, just do whatever you would do at home. And so the two kids are sitting there, and the starter decks are in this room. And the room is basically empty besides this, right? We've taken away. I don't even know if cell phones were a thing, but they don't have any phones. They have literally no activities to do

other than open up this starter deck product. And they just sit there at the table with the decks in the middle of the table. And so we had to go, it's like, okay, well, this clearly has failed. Send the researcher back in and say, hey, now you need to open these and try out these a starter decks. But you just don't know where the research is going to go

and how people are going to respond. But I will always remember those two kids just being like, I would rather do nothing than engage with your game. Wow. That's amazing. Yeah, well, it was something. It was something. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so we've talked, we've talked a bit about the, you know, the importance of consumer research and being able to try to get valuable feedback. That's not, you know, not with you in the room and how to process that feedback, which are all, you know, just skills I continue to work towards and continue to develop. I think it's really worthwhile for, for everybody. You know, you've also talked about a couple of things that came out of your recent development process, one of which was working new IP into magic, right? So that's both from Dodgers and Dragons and Godzilla and Lord of the Rings, as well as Commander, which is a

game that came from, you know, from the community, not from not from Wizards, a format anyway. And I know that now it's sort of in retrospect, those things seem like pretty obvious decisions. They've been very successful and the, and they're making a lot of money. But I also know there was a lot of resistance inside of the coast of these ideas. And the idea that it took this long for there to be, for example, Dungeons and Dragons Magic set when Wizards owns both of those IP, to many people is kind of bizarre. And I even had Peter Agkisson on this podcast talking about how he pushed for

this way, way back in the day. Maybe you can talk a little bit about what that decision-making process was like. And if this was something that you were as a product architect, we're part of pushing or I just would love to know some of those stories. It's definitely one of those interesting product lifecycle questions. Well, yeah, I definitely want to give a lot of, so yes, there's definitely been a lot of back and forth over the years about, you know, what the magic, what magic is, what magic should be, You know, one of the things that we've really embraced more recently than in the past is this understanding that, oh, the magic audience is just, it's bigger than we ever imagined.

There's people who are motivated by, you know, more aspects, right? I think a lot of the magic's history sort of after the pro tour was created, it became sort of very focused on this one-on-one style gameplay, right? And I win, you lose. And as you mentioned, Commander introduced multiplayer. I mean, multiplayer was a thing early on, but sort of the competitive aspects of magic were promoted. And more recently, we've just said, like, hey, the magic audience is bigger.

They want story. They want, you know, they're fans of not just magic, but they're fans of lots of these other properties and expressions that you're mentioning. Like, how do we do that? And I give a lot of credit to Aaron Forsyth here again. And, you know, he really came to the magic design group and the magic business teams and just really talked about the opportunities of, hey, you know, here's magic can do more. Magic design can be, you know, it can be more than just this one-on-one play. there's there's really a lot of space

and a lot of opportunity for us to connect and make cards that that people love you know that connect you know Lord of the Rings to magic that connect Godzilla to magic right the stranger things

you know there's there's tons of these properties that we've been working with and and are super excited to do. You know, from my standpoint, one of the big pieces was figuring out what it meant, like, from an organization point of view to be partnering with these other brands. You know, one of the places I'm really involved in is with Extra Life,

which does charity fundraising for children's hospitals. and the product we did for the first product that we did for Extra Life was was ponies the galloping. So this was taking Magic the Gathering and My Little Ponies and making a product where the sales, a portion of the sales would go and benefit children's hospitals. And so I was excited about it from the charity aspect, of course. But then I also was excited of like, oh, let's start, you know, learning about what it means to be working with another brand, right? And we had dabbled before then. But that was really one of the first big opportunities sort of after Aaron gave its presentation.

And we just continue to grow and learn and do better things, right? I was super excited about Acoria and partnering with Toho and Godzilla. And then we got to incorporate it into our secret layer product line. We did a Walking Dead product. We've done stranger things just recently. And now, like I mentioned before, with Crimson Bow, we have Dracula series boxtoppers and in the collector boosters. It's like, oh, like, you know, it's a set about vampires.

Like, what would this set be without, you know, the ultimate vampire that really started at all in Bram Stoker's Dracula? And so, yeah, lots of opportunities. I hope you can hear how excited I am by all of it because it's been pretty awesome to be able to work with, you know, these top tier properties in expressions and bring them to magic. Yeah, it's, I mean, it's something. I know I've been very excited about to see finally come to life. And I think there's lots of great examples here where you get to bring some of those principles we talked about earlier to bear where you're really able to tell this story. When you're working with these IP, it's even more important that you tell their story well, that it resonates with their audience well,

then when you're telling a unique to magic story where the audience is sort of already invested to begin with, and both are important. I think I was particularly impressed when I saw the Dungeons and Dragons set, and there was a series of cards where you had a modal choice to make, and they were presented like a Dungeons and Dragons adventures. You know, like you come to a river and, you know, do you wait over it or, you know, go around? And if you wait over it, then you got some, you know, there was, you know, tapped a creature. If you went around and it did something else, I forget the specifics.

But it just like created that little bit of extra flavor that made the choice, a story, was just so powerful and so amazing. I was really impressed. And there's a lot of little little things like that that are really, really fun. Yeah, yeah, for God and Realm, right, which is the D&D set, you're mentioning, yeah, the designers just really,

really connected so well with, hey, okay, what does it mean to be a magic card that's inspired by D&D, right? And so you were talking about like sort of the ability, you know, these abilities or, you know, the flavor text style, things of, oh, the name that's given there doesn't have any mechanical use. It is really just flavor. But that flavor really takes it from, hey, you know, I mean, there's cards like Cryptic Command, which have four different choices on them. but here these choices were presented just like you would expect in a D&D campaign

and how that makes the difference. And then, you know, extending that to one of the things magic's really expanded on a lot is what we call booster fun, right? Making these awesome, desirable objects, cards that really once again connect. And, you know, we had cards that tied back, like their alternate versions tied back to those original D&D modules or, you know,

the D&D rule books that you would get of the past and have art in the style of those cards. So you're holding a beholder that, while it's a different illustration than was maybe in your original D&D books, it's very much inspired by and easily would have fit into those original rule books. And often, too, done by some of the original, the original D&D artists. And so that was a super cool touch for a long-time D&D players who just, you know, love some of those old school artists work. Yeah.

So you mentioned a phrase here, which I'd like to unpack a little bit, a booster fun. And I also want, is that, you know, I recognize we only have so much time left. I really want to spend some time, you know, talking about the parts of design and the parts that make a product fund that are not commonly discussed here. So booster fun, you know, we can unpack and I assume, you know, has to do with that joy of opening a booster, but also, you know, packaging design and placement and all of those things. Like I'd love to just get your insights because as a product architect,

it's your job to think through all of this stuff. And I think it's something that designers don't put enough thought into generally. So maybe we'll start with booster fun and we can kind of jump around from there. Yeah, so booster fun, when you know, when we were talking about research earlier, one of the main reasons that people say they open up packs of magic is fun, right? They want the joy of opening up a booster pack. And so really when we took on project, you know,

at the time it was called Project Booster Fun, we've simplified it to simply booster fun, was, okay, how can we make opening a magic? pack more fun and it and also you know what is what all does that entail so um you know starting with throne of eldrine uh we we sort of rolled out booster fun we had these adventure frames eldrine is a is set in a sort of fairy tale adventure style setting right and so the adventure frames, you know, they had very, they looked like a storybook. And it was just a really, a really nice touch. And then we did an alternate version and introduced the collector booster, which was a

brand new product type. You know, so instead of, for years and years, Magic only had, what I'll call the draft booster, you know, 15 cards. Yet you could open it, you could draft it was one size fits all. But once again, we just realized, hey, our audience is bigger than this. Now there's, you know, there's people who love collecting. There's people who love, you know, the aesthetics of magic and are motivated by that. Like, how can we build some more distinction into our product lineup? So that way, the magic player who wants to draft and love drafting, like, yes, we can build the best draft booster for them, but for the player who's more into it for the collecting piece,

like what does that look like? And so booster fun and the collector booster sort of all partnered up and became this package and became part of just, I'll say, a new way of thinking about magic where, oh, like what are our alternate variance that, are super exciting, they capture this world super well. And, you know, we've really gone, we've, you know, evolved and grown a lot from even those early steps in Throneville,

and once again, talking about bringing in other properties to magic, expanding the variance that we're doing. So it's like, oh, here it is in Midnight Hunt. We have, you know, for the legends, we have a showcase Eternal Night and we do this black and white style for the legends and the lands. But then also since midnight hunts about werewolves, there's a fake showcase fang frame. And, you know, it's really just given us a chance to expand our offering. It also, too, become a self-fulfilling prophecy. When you see these cards, I mean, they are outstanding.

One of my favorite parts of my job is working on these showcase treatments, right, the booster fun and seeing them because they all, like the creative team does an amazing job. And when we show them off internally, they always get lots of ooze and awe. They really just captures like that joy and the booster fund that they're intended to bring. Yeah. So, you know, when I think about this in terms of, you know, other. designs and things that people can use is that thinking about that product opening experience, thinking about what it is that's like people are looking for when they pick a thing up off the shelf and what the feelings and emotions that they have when they open up, whether it's a

randomized pack or even a fixed content, new release or something for your product, is really important and has a lot of drivers for people that are going to be, are they going to open up the next pack or open up your next product? In addition to the other. principle that you've now highlighted multiple times, which is that, you know, there's a lot of different members of the audience that play your game for different reasons and being conscious of how you're serving each side of that audience and not losing sight of one because you're focused on the competitive players too much or whatever specific demographic, I think is a really important thing. And that also ties back to, you know, the surveys, right? It sounds like that

consumer research is part of what revealed a lot of the stuff to you that, hey, people really care about the fun of opening a pack experience or actually a majority of our players are playing commander at home and not playing in pro you know pro pro pro pro pro qualifiers and how do we serve those people like that just getting that information getting out of your own internal biases is so is so critical yeah and i think you know you asked me about the the packaging piece of it i think those internal biases you know often when you've been working on a product you end up very close to the product right like um you know I've been at Wizards for 17 years.

And so I know the ins and outs about much of what magic has done during that time. But it's important to remember that there's a player out there who they're buying their first, you know, they're buying your game or their first pack today. Right. And so what is that experience like for the first time player or even the, the, the occasional player. I remember around the time one of the Ravnikas sets was coming out. And I happened to be on jury duty, right?

And jury duty is basically the most random sample of an audience that you can get, right? And I happened to be talking to one of, there's a lot of downtime during jury duty. And so I was talking to one of the other people, and they told me that, they were a magic player and that they were a really big fan of blue and red. And I said to them like, oh, are you excited for that, you know, magic's going back to Ravnica and for the new, the blue red guild is called Isit in Ravnika? Are you excited for Is it? And they looked at me like I was from another planet, right? Like, like their experiences with Magic are they would walk into a Walmart or a target and buy a couple packs of whatever happened to be.

there, right? They didn't, they're not reading the magic website. They're not up to date with, oh, here's this new set coming out. Like they literally just buy a few packs and dabble here and there. And it's just a really good reminder of, you know, a lot of the conversations and a lot of what you feel are important are often lost on on your players because they are just not nearly as close to the product in the game as you are, as the designer, working on it, you know, day in and day out, right? Like, I don't know about you, Justin, but I've definitely woken up in the middle of the night and been like, oh, I need to change this card, right, back when I was a designer.

Like, and I'm like, oh, was this in my dreams? Like, why, how come my first thought of consciousness is, I need to change this card or I need to change this mechanic? Like, that's how, that's how close you are as a designer. where compared to this person on jury duty, you know, they didn't even realize that the new set was coming out, right? And they didn't even realize, oh, that blue red is called is it, et cetera, et cetera.

Like, it's just all was lost on it. So practically speaking, how does that lead to different behaviors on your part, right? So we know, you know, you tend to focus on the people who are most invested and certainly the people who are commenting online or your own bias for being super, close to it leads you to a certain set of beliefs, knowing that there's this silent majority out there of new players, casual players, people who don't really engage as much, how does that change your day to day? Or what do you, what do you, how does it influence the product design? I mean, to me, I think one of the, I'll say it wants me to make things, I'll say simple and

high contrast, right? Of like, oh, once again, you know, for, for the play, who's walking by, you only have a few seconds to grab their attention. It has to be something very compelling and very direct to even do that, right? Like if you're going to a hobby store, you know, if you're on Steam, purchasing a new game, whatever. However, however you get your games and buy the different components, it's like, it's often likely that the person won't even see what you have to offer. So how do you catch their eye? And once you have caught their eye, how do you make sure you maintain that? Right.

And so often it's just having that simple message, having a compelling message, having something that's repetitive of, oh, maybe they see it the first time and decide no, but the second time, you know, they realized, oh, that is something I wanted. From the direct card design perspective, I remember working on, I think it was FutureSight, and one of my, one of the people, you know, all the design, like I was the design lead. There were team members. One of the team members was trying to convince me of like, oh, players are tired of slivers, right, which is one of the creature types.

And it was really more the fact that he, as someone working on magic and really close to magic, and just seen Slivers time and again over the course of his experience. But I realized that, like, you know, at the time, slivers were quite popular with our fans. And there was likely players who didn't buy those past sets that had Slivers. And so for them, they wouldn't be tired of it, right? But it's just that internal perspective of you spend all day looking at the cards that you're working on, the products that you're working on.

and you have to remember that's just, you know, the vast majority of your players are going to get together with their friends, you know, once a week or twice a week to play games. And so how come they're picking your game as the one to play or to talk about or to purchase, right? Because there's a lot of awesome games out there. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that the, man, there's so many more things.

I want to talk about, but I don't have time. So, all right, I guess I'm going to bring this back to some of the core things I know people must be asking because I think you're, you know, you've been working there for 17 years. You have what is a dream job to millions. If somebody were getting started today and wanted to aspire to do what you do, whether that be at Wizard specifically or, you know, in a similar vein, what advice would you have for them? Well, I first, you know, in some way, while I've only briefly touched on my origin story, the fact to me that we're game designers, like, if you had gone back to us when we were 14 and said, like, oh, is this, is this your dream? Is this something? Like, it wasn't even in my field of vision that game design

was a thing, right? Like, yeah, totally. Right? It's just like, you know, and if you had said it, I'd be like, oh, I guess that, I guess that makes sense that someone out there. like making clue and designing how it works and the rules and this and that. And there's someone else working on the packaging and et cetera, et cetera. But so I say that to really highlight, I think both of our paths were highly unconventional, right? And I think one of the things that's important for someone who wants to get into the field is there are conventional ways, right? Like now there are, like, university programs offer game design.

You can, of course, just, you know, join game design groups and do game designs. And, of course, I mean, as we were highlighting before, just doing it and inexperienced of, like, you know, design your own game. Take an existing design game and, you know, design and expansion. You know, remember that there, but I think ultimately the thing I would say is it's important to remember that the field is very new. And I think that there's lots of unconventional paths in that you have to explore and figure out what you're good at and then follow your passion. Right. I mean, you know, while we've been talking, like there are so many people that help make magic and help make these games. right you know develop computer developers programmers you know finance people legal sales like you know

marketing brand and so if it's a field that you're really interested in getting into you know that's awesome but tap into what you love and find a way to blend that with games right and I think that's a a great path towards success. And even if it doesn't work out, at least then you'll have a great skill that, you know, lots of companies will want. And you can still keep playing and designing games as a hobby.

And I think that's wonderful too. Yeah, yeah. The ability to have that overlap of a skill that's not just game design, but some other useful skill makes you exponentially more valuable to any given company. I mean, it's so much,

I know when I hire, right, if somebody can do graphic design as well as game design, like phenomenal. Like now you, now I could do a lot more with you or even somebody that's already been involved in community forums and can write well and can communicate with the public. Like that's a huge value at. You know, there's so many different things that can add value to a game company or to any company that, and the more that you have a diverse set of skills,

you know, being a great designer is obviously fantastic, but there's a lot of great designers out there. Being someone that can offer multiple different fields of skill is really valuable and even get you a foot in the door in a variety of different ways into the company that you want to work with. And then I would tie with that something that I have known, knowing you as a friend for many years, and that everybody that I know that's worked with you echoes constantly, which is, you know, be a great person. You have always been just a very kind, very friendly, very giving human being and are noted as such. And that makes a big difference too, man.

You want to hire people that are good that you want to work with. and I know that's something that you have exhibited throughout the time I've known you, and I'm sure it's come across our audience here. And so I want to thank you for, you know, coming on and having this chat with me. Yeah, yeah, I definitely, I was super excited to talk with you today. You know, I definitely thank you for the nice words. And I think that it's really true. People remember how you make them feel.

And, you know, this story, our stories are always. ones where, you know, we had teammates and partners and people who wanted to work with us. And we wanted to help them succeed and they wanted us to succeed. You know, I mentioned Randy Bueller probably an hour ago now. And he was the one who, like, he was my teammate when I was playing on the Magic Pro Tour. And like the interview process I had of getting into Wizards on a, on a contract was we went to a Mexican restaurant for lunch and he was like, well, we always have this internship that comes up. You know, there's, there's no one I'd rather have do it than you. So would you like to do it? And that was that was the interview. But of course, of course, that also

was preceded by years and years of us working together and being, you know, having good experiences. And so yeah, definitely you become what you do. And so you might as well do good things because it'll make a big difference for you and for those around you. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, my story is nearly identical. I got my first job at Upper Deck because Dave Humphreys and, you know, a bunch of

the other people that I worked with at the time Darwin Castle was contracting there. And a bunch of people I worked with on Team Your Move games were there. And so they were like, hey, yeah, we want to work with. with you again because we worked together on a team in the pro tour for many, many years. And so we all knew each other's work ethic and, you know, the integrity and intelligence and that, you know, made it very easy to get, get in the door. And then, of course, you get the opportunity to demonstrate all of those things again to all the new people that you work with.

And that's what lets you continue and succeed. So, so yeah, it's a, it's a very, very true thing. And just being able to be good with people and work on those things as you go is just, honestly, there's no better lesson that you can take. away because it's not going to matter whether you're a game designer or a product manager or you're in finance or you're in any non-game field that those fundamental skills are going to carry you forward. So this has been been fantastic. Is there anything else that you would like to share with our audience or other things you'd like

to promote again? Usually it takes about a month or so after we talk before this actually goes live with editing, etc. But is there anything that you'd like to share or places people can find more cool stuff that you're working on, if they want to find out more. I guess I'll plug magic in general. I mean, to me, I started playing magic when I was 14 years old, and it's a game that changed my life.

And holy for the better, right? Like, like I said, when I discovered magic, it blew my mind. It was so exciting. And it's led me to make amazing friends, to travel the world, to get to compete at it, to now come to work at Wizards. And, you know, a big motivation of the reason I work at Wizards is, you know, to pay it forward, to get other people to find this amazing game. And if it's not magic for you and it's some other game, that's totally awesome. And then the second thing I'll plug is, like I mentioned, I spend a lot of time working with and leading the magic partners with Extra Life. You can go to extralif.wizzards.com and learn more about what we did there.

But it fundraises money for children's hospitals around the country. Wizards specifically partners with Seattle Children's Hospital. And in doing that volunteer work and leading the team and being involved in magic, it's just, it opens up so many, it opens up so many doors. It changes your perspective on the world. It just helps you, you know, volunteering helps you grow skills. And I would really encourage people out there to go and find an organization that they're passionate about. and donate some money, donate some time and really get involved because I can't speak highly enough for how much it's really meant to me to be a part of extra life and just doing volunteer work.

That is a wonderful place to end it. the work that Extra Life does. I appreciate your contributions here. I, in fact, am right now going to make a donation on your behalf here because I think that's such a great thing that you're doing and I'm happy to support and we will share those links as well with this podcast. So thank you so much, Mike. And I can't wait until we get another chance to chat. Awesome. Thanks, Justin. I look forward to listening to all of the other podcasts. You've talked to so many great designers. I've learned some things and, you know,

it just makes me reflect on what I know and how I can become a better designer. So I appreciate the work you do. Thank you, man. Until next time. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's podcast. If you want to support the podcast, please rate, comment, and share on your favorite podcast platform such as iTunes, Stitcher, or whatever device you're listening on.

Listener reviews and shares make a huge difference and help us grow this community and allow me to bring more amazing guests and insights to you. I've taken the insights from these interviews along with my 20 years of experience in the game industry and compressed it all into a book with the same title as this podcast, Think Like a Game Designer. In it, I give step-by-step instructions on how to apply the lessons from these great designers and bring your own games to life. If you think you might be interested, you can check out the book at Think Like a Game

designer.com or wherever fine books are sold.