6/28/13 Episode 40: Wizards of the Coast

All podcast content by Mark Rosewater

Okay, I’m pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It’s time for another Drive to Work.

Okay, so today—I like to use my podcast to do different things, but one of the things I’ve had fun is using them as kind of a historical marker to sort of talk about the history of Magic and where it came from. So today I thought I’d talk about Wizards of the Coast. The company that brought you Magic and continues to bring you Magic.

The history of Wizards. It’s something that those of who work at Wizards, you know, know about, because it’s something that as a company they sort of definitely want to make sure we know where we came from. But I don’t know if the stories we’ve shared all that publicly, I mean it’s on the internet I guess if you hunt them down.

So, where did it all begin? It began in Seattle. In the late ‘80s—well, the story begins in the late ‘80s. So Peter Adkison, who was a gamer, mostly—(???) he was a role-playing gamer. He loved role-playing. Loved loved loved it. And he at the time, Peter worked for Boeing, I believe, and he and his friends used to role-play all the time. And one day Peter said, you know, “Maybe it’d be cool if we started a company to make role-playing stuff.”

Now understand at the time, Peter was working full-time at Boeing, so Wizards of the Coast got started I think in April of 1990, got incorporated I guess, and back then—the story is that Peter informed his friends—now, I actually did some research, (???). Who exactly were (???) And what I found in doing the research was, there’s—it’s kind of like who’s the fifth Beatle. That there’s a lot of different people that you could count as being the five people that founded Wizards. I’m sure there’s a definitive answer but I was not able to find it.

I mean obviously Peter was one of the five. To the best of my guess, I think Rich Kaalaas, who was an art director who made Magic’s first logo, was I think one of the five, Jay Hayes, I think Ken McGlothlen, and Steve Conard? That’s my best guess for the five. Steve Conard would go on to lead the design of Legends, and Jay and Rich and Steve were all—I worked with all of them. I never worked with Ken that I believe, or if I did it was very early on. I might be missing something. There were other people very early on. John Jordan in theory could have been, Jesper Myrfors, the first art director was there early on. I know that Lisa Stevens was the very first employee. So there’s a bunch of people.

But when the company as first started, it was started in Peter’s basement, and it was kind of a company that everybody did on their spare time. That everyone was still working. It wasn’t like—Peter was still, his day job was working at Boeing, and so in the early days, what in Wizards they call the “basement days,” was literally run out of Peter’s basement.

And so early on, they were a role-playing company. Peter loved role-playing, so they were making I think the third edition for a role-playing game called Talislanta that I know very little about. And a supplement that Peter had made that was meant for any role-playing game, called The Primal Order. So there’s a card later made in Magic called Primal Order that was a toss to the—to Peter’s game.

So anyway, they make this role-playing company, they make some stuff, and I think in The Primal Order they made mention of another company. Like “Oh, you know, when you play this game, for example you could play with this game,” and that other company got mad and sued them, saying—feeling like they were, you know, they were implying that this was for their game when it wasn’t and they hadn’t licensed it and stuff. And so early on, Wizards of the Coast was being sued by at the time a much bigger company than them because they were a teeny-tiny company.

But, around this time, things were looking pretty bleak. I know that in ’93, I believe, ’92 or ’93, Peter sent out a memo to all the employees which wasn’t many people at the time, and basically said “Look guys, we have to scale back, I’ve got to cut all salaries,” you know, and all these people ended up getting paid in stock options, which later would go on to be an awesome deal, but at the time, you know, looks sort of not so good. But things were looking bad.

Meanwhile, a young mathematician—so Richard Garfield and his friend Mike Davis—Mike Davis would go on to be the VP of R&D for a while, the head of R&D for a while, in fact Mike Davis hired me. So they came to Wizards, they were trying to make Richard’s game Robo Rally.

Now, for those that have never played Robo Rally, which I think is still for sale, Wizards has made it, the premise of it is, you have robots in a robot factory and you’re racing around. And you have to program whether the robot goes forward or left or backs up or turns around or, you know, and you have to preprogram everything, and then there’s all these obstacles in your way. There’s conveyer belts and lasers and all sorts—and other robots. And so the fun is, you have to sort of plan ahead what’s going to happen, and then as you get damaged you have less ability to sort of—moves get locked in, and, you know. So anyway, it’s a fun game.

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

I’m not sure whether Peter brought the idea of cards or Richard, but I think Peter knew that he had access to—there was a local art school that he was using to do illustration. And he said “Oh, I have access to artists, and I can print.” So basically I think what he said to Richard is he wanted a game that was portable and short, and the idea was it’s a game you could play in-between role-playing games. But the key of it was, it had to be portable, it had to be short, it had to be something you could print, just print, and they had access to artists, so art would be good.

And with that, Richard said to him, “Oh, I think I have an idea.” And Richard went off. So eventually Richard came back with the idea for Magic. So what happened was, Richard had gone home, by the time I think Richard was at U Penn in Philadelphia, and he was, you know, he had a bunch of gamers there, friends, and they were sort of playtesting it, and so he came back, and when he showed it to Peter, Peter loved it. Loved it. And he was like “We’re going to make this. We’re going to make this. We’re going to make this game.” And Peter was very excited.

Now, the interesting thing was, remember, they were being sued at the time by a company. And so in order to protect Magic, because you know, I mean—Peter early on saw, really did see the potential of Magic and really went all in. Believed in it. And so what happened was, they set up another company which was Garfield Games.

So for those that have ever seen an Alpha box, you’ll know that it says Wizards of the Coast and Garfield Games. The reason it says Garfield Games was, because they were being sued, they didn’t want to lose the lawsuit and lose Magic. So they incorporated a separate company that then licensed the rights to the game to Wizards. And Richard was the head of that company.

Which would later go on to be really good, by the way, because by the time—once the lawsuit was settled, Wizards of the Coast purchased Magic from Garfield Games, but by that time it had gotten big enough that Garfield Games was worth a lot, and so when—I mean, I guess we’ll get to this story, but when Hasbro ended up buying Wizards and Wizards—all the stockholders got bought off, the largest shareholder ended up being Richard Garfield. The reason for that was, (???) company Garfield Games, but when they had to buy off the stock, Magic had done well enough that that had the most value in it. Anyway, a little—little side story.

Okay, so what happened was, Magic exploded. Now, to Peter’s credit, because Peter took the game and drove up and down the coast and played it at every game store he could. Because what Peter knew was, this was an awesome game, but it was different. It was not something that you had seen before, and that he knew that in order to get people invested, he needed them to see it.

Because Magic was the kind of game that once you held the cards in your hand, you were just entranced and he knew he could sell it. And he knew he could sell it to the store owners, but remember, the key was, he needed to get the store owners interested to sell it. Now, the other thing remember was, early Magic—when I say it was a runaway hit, it was, but it came out—it did not hit everywhere at once. In fact, most of Alpha—I don’t have percentages, but most of it—my guess is like 80% of it was on the west coast. Because that’s where Peter was. He lived in Washington, he drove down the coast, and so—the early Magic, really the first buzz happened in California.

Now, at the same time, they went to Gen Con that summer. This is ’93. So technically I think Magic had been premiered at Origins, which was a few weeks before in July, and then in August of ’93 was Gen Con. Like I said, Peter was a long-time role-playing fan, and Gen Con was a great mecca for Peter. Now, Peter would go on many years later, by the way, to buy and run Gen Con. But that’s not really part of this story, but a little side note. 

And so they came there to show off Magic. And it was the smash hit. Like, every convention, kind of what happens is, some game is the hot talk of the convention. And the running motif of Magic  in its early years is, it was so popular that they couldn’t keep up. You know. And one of the stories, essentially is, I’ve told this before, is like what they printed for Alpha they thought was a six months’ supply. And they sold out in weeks. And then what they printed for Beta they thought was another six months’ supply, and it sold out in a single week.

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

Now remember, I believe when Magic came out, or very short before Magic came out, the company was still in Peter’s basement. And at that point, they had had a few employees, you know, they were up to—in Peter’s basement—I don’t know, ten employees maybe? And so what happened was, eventually they had to go get a—they had—they go got offices.

Those were the offices that when I first—so what happened for me was, I’ve told this story but the little short version is, I freelanced for Wizards early on. Originally I was working for The Duelist, and then I started branching for other sections of the company. I worked for like seven different sections of the company, mostly doing writing.

So here’s what was going on early days of Wizards is, they were exploding. Magic, just, they couldn’t print enough Magic. It was just going like gangbusters. And so they had influx of cash like they’d never had before. And so they were expanding wildly. And the problem was, they didn’t know—they needed employees. So early on, a lot of Wizards was just friends getting hired and friends of friends getting hired.

And that early Wizards was just like, they were like, you know, you’d almost walk in the door trying to say, you know, “Hey, I’m here to visit my friend Joe.” “You want a job?” “Uh, okay…” You know. And it just—early on exploded. And what happened was, that, because of the explosion, a lot of people who came on who were early, you know, were rising through the ranks.

Like one of the stories I used to tell is, there’s a girl named Carol.  Carol Monahan. And she was, I think, the first receptionist. I think in the basement days, I believe. And Carol would go on to be head of Sales. I mean, this took many years. But, you know, when she left the company, she was the head of Sales. You know. And that when she started, I don’t think she’d ever worked sales before. But she was smart, she was with it, and, you know, and just there was so much going on, and just like things were happening, that she climbed her way up to the point that she was head of Sales.

Now, be aware at this point in Magic’s early history, they couldn’t print enough. So, I mean, Sales was—in some ways was logistics. Because it was like “So many people want stuff, how do we deal with it?”

And in the early days of Magic they couldn’t give—they couldn’t, everybody couldn’t have as much as they wanted, because they couldn’t make enough. And so a lot of early days was allocation, you know, and then people would like try to game the system, right? Because let’s say you really wanted ten cases. You’d order fifty cases. Because if you only got a fifth of your order, then you still got what you wanted. And there’s all sorts of shenanigans. The early days was a little chaotic.

And like I said, a lot of other people realized this, but like it took a while to understand the printing process, you know, Arabian Nights had duplicates in it, as did Antiquities, like you could get the same card twice, and they had to go back in press for Arabian Nights so there’s different versions of Arabian Nights cards. Antiquities had duplicates, and Legends had this thing where like there was uncommons in A group and uncommons in the B group so there were two sheets I’m guessing. And that either your box got all the A uncommons or all the B uncommons. So like if you open up your box of Legends, you can only get half the uncommons. The other uncommons just weren’t in the box. So there were a lot of growing pains.

So the game came out—the company started in ’90, the game came out in ’93, and was (???) gangbusters. So I started freelancing for them in ’94. And I was working for the Duelist and then I started a lot of writing. So one of the things that happened is, I would come up, they would bring me up to do some freelance projects. Because I would mostly work at home, but sometimes, you know, I just needed to interact with other people, so they would fly me up every once in a while so I had a chance to visit with Wizards. In fact, one of those visitations is when I basically said that I’d be willing to move to Seattle and they’re like “When can you start?”

So the early days of Wizards was very interesting. It was a young company with young people. It was very—Wizards definitely in the early days had this attitude of—people, so for example my wife Lora, I met her at Wizards. So Lora’s story was, she had been working at a company that made like bricks and she wasn’t really happy, just—it was boring. And so she started temping.

And so she ended up temping for Wizards of the Coast. And she came the first day in her suit and, you know, she was used to a very corporate environment, and like she walks in and it’s like people are wearing leather, and all in black, and what to her (???) like costumes, but it was just like people who sort of—this was a role-playing crowd, and people that were definitely, you know—it was a very different mindset and Lora was very taken aback.

And it’s funny because at first she’s like “I didn’t know if I wanted to work here.” But you know after being there for a little bit it’s like “Oh, I really like this, this is fun.” She goes, “I didn’t know work could be fun.”

And in the early days this (???) like Nerf wars, you know like people would, like, one of the stories I always tell is, at some point I’ll do the courtship of my wife, but I remember when I first got there when I was visiting, before I even worked there, and that late at night, you know, a lot of people had Nerf weaponry. My wife actually had the Nerf bow and arrow I used to borrow before I knew who she was. And I had Nerf fights at night.

But the company was young and wild and the joke about early Wizards is that they did two things awesomely. One was make Magic, and the other one was burn money. So one of the things about the early days is, they—I mean, Peter was super generous, they would, you know, take everybody and get them on a bus and go for trips. You know. They would have parties, like, you know, there was an anniversary party. There was a giant blowout and, you know, they’d rent out a train station or something, and you know, the early days were just extravagant.

And I mean it was weird. It was very raw, it was very exciting, but there wasn’t a lot of expertise, you know. Like I said, my example with Carol, where, I mean, she was smart and with it, but she did not have any sales training. You know, that’s not where she had come from, and that the company was full of a lot of people that were bright and eager and passionate, but that were not, you know, were not really people that were trained in that field. And so the company was definitely, you know, doing its best, but was definitely young and didn’t know a lot of what it was doing.

So I came in in ’95. So Magic took off in, came out in July of ’93, so I started a little over two years later, I was freelancing for most of ’94, and eventually I said I’d be willing to—I’d be willing to move to Seattle. And so when I got there, we were still in that first building.

So Wizards has had four locations thus far. The first location was in Peter’s basement. The second was in an office building in Renton, but not—a couple blocks away from where we are now. And then when I got there we were moving to our new offices, which were the offices we have been in for ten years.

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

William and I didn’t have desks. So we were told, “Just when someone’s not there, use their desk and log into your…” you know, I could log into my stuff but through someone else’s computer. And so the first like six to eight weeks I’m just like “Desk nomad, finding a place to do my work!” And the—so I got there in October, the end of October of ’95, and at the time things were exploding. You know, it still was a role-playing company, but they obviously were doing Magic, and they were starting to branch out to try to do some other games.

Now at the time, they thought that they would—that the trading card game was going to be a whole thing. In fact, on the back of the Magic card, you see “Deckmaster.” What that is is, they decided to brand Wizards of the Coast trading card games, so that, you know, that they wanted the Deckmaster brand. Magic was just the first of the Deckmaster brand.

Now they would go on to make Jyhad, later called  “Vampire: The Eternal Struggle,” and they made Netrunner, and then later they would also make BattleTech. I think all—I think all those were considered Deckmaster. But anyway, the trading card game—(???) Magic was working, but the other games didn’t—didn’t—in the long run, didn’t last.

So anyway, I got there in October. In December, we get a meeting. This was—oh, we used to have all hands every week. And what that meant is, that we had a giant room, every single person in the company would come, and at that time we were a hundred and something? No, let’s see. I was… what was I? I think I was the 281^st employee is my guess. Anyway, I—people have come and gone. I think when I was there early on, there were about 150-200 people there maybe.

Okay, so, what happened was, we would—every week, Peter would gather everybody together, and literally it would be like Peter would tell us what was going on. And if someone was new, Peter would introduce the new person. And it was a very—it was a small enough company that we could sort of gather together in one room and sort of talk about stuff.

But as the company got a little bigger, it got harder and harder to do that. So—but this was early enough that we still could get in one room. And so Peter got together and said “Okay, guys, got some bad news.” He was pretty straightforward. “We’re making some changes, and we’re going to have to let some people go. We’re going to break up into groups, and your individual managers will explain what’s going on.” And so R&D got together.

And what we discovered was, Wizards had decided that the role-playing part of the company—it was just losing money. And so they decided that they’d still be—still make Magic, obviously, Magic was the cash cow, and they still wanted to make other games, and Wizards at this point, like I said, had branched out not just doing trading card games but I think at this point we had made Robo Rally, we had made a card game called The Great Dalmuti. So we were going to make games, we were a game company, but role-playing was just not proving profitable for us.

And so they shut down the—now, understand at the time, that was a good chunk of people at the company. You know, when I said there was like 150 people, they laid off maybe in one day 50 to 75 people. And it was known at the time as Black Wednesday. And it was pretty—you have to remember, this was the company where, like, everything was hunky-dory all the time, and things were great, and, you know, there were trips and all, and the company—this was the first time the company had ever kind of said “Oh, look, there’s a problem. And we’ve got to address it.”

And in some ways it was kind of the first adult thing—if you think of the company’s, you know, the young adult years where it—they finally had to do something that was like “We didn’t want to do this, but we needed to do it.” And so that happened.

So what happened then was, Wizards really started getting into the idea of “We’re a game company, we’re going to make lots of different games,” and that we started then making more board games and things. Richard came up with a game called “What Were You Thinking?” that we made. Anyway, we made a bunch—a lot of the games are done by Richard. I mean, Filthy Rich was done around then, I mean there’s a long—you can go look on the Wizards of the Coast, I’m sure there’s a list of our games.

So what happened then was, the next big thing I think, trying to get my order correct, was—okay, do I have this the order correct? So Peter loved role-playing games. Loved loved loved them. And he grew up playing Dungeons and Dragons. That was a game that he had loved. And so at some point, Peter realized—oh, actually, maybe I do have this backwards. Well, anyway. My chronology might be slightly—so what happened was, Peter loved Dungeons and Dragons.

And at some point, he realized that—so TSR was the company that made Dungeons and Dragons. You know, Gary Gygax way back when, started the company, and what happened was they had fallen on hard times. There was a lot of—I don’t know, I don’t want to speak to what happened, but they were in trouble. The company was in trouble. TSR was in trouble. And Peter, you know, flushed with Magic money, said, “Oh my God, here’s a wonderful opportunity.” He’s like “This is an amazing brand, Dungeons and Dragons is an amazing brand, this is crazy. It shouldn’t be on the verge of bankruptcy.”

And so Peter went, or Wizards of the Coast went, and bought TSR. And that’s how Dungeons and Dragons became part of Wizards of the Coast is Peter’s passion for—for role-playing, and specifically for Dungeons and Dragons. I mean, I remember when Peter told us about it, he was so excited. This was like a dream come true. I mean, for example, the best way to describe it is, imagine growing up, and the thing that was your passion growing up, that one day you buy it. Like imagine a kid like grew up and has a favorite sports team, and then one day he buys the sports team. That is the equivalent of what happened with Peter and TSR and Dungeons and Dragons.

Peter was in heaven. He was excited. And so we got back into role-playing, but we got back into role-playing with the top role-playing game. Dungeons and Dragons. And around the same time, like I said my chronology, there was—Nintendo had made a video game. And because—when Magic came out, there was a period when trading card games were just the hot thing. Because Magic—what happens is, you see successes and people copy successes.

And so somebody had decided—so the new game from Nintendo was called Pokémon. And so someone had decided that there should be a trading card game. That Pokémon would be a good trading card game. So they designed it. And then they came to us, to Wizards of the Coast, and asked if we would distribute the trading card game. Or we could—we would make and distribute it. Because we, we had the knowledge of how to do trading cards, we had knowledge how to produce them, you know, we had a tournament system all set up so people could play them.

And so Wizards of the Coast took on Pokémon. And… holy moly! Magic was a success in that, you know, we couldn’t keep up. We couldn’t keep demand. Pokémon was a different—Pokémon was what I’ll call a fad. Eh, fad’s incorrect because it’s still being made. But it just hit the cultural zeitgeist. And while Magic was an amazing thing and a real big thing among gaming people, Pokémon just became this crazy thing among kids. Just this giant, giant thing.

And it was a roller coaster for Wizards, you know. We had experienced some success with Magic, but Pokémon was just on a scale that was just very different. Because, I mean like all—almost every kid in America was playing Pokémon, you know. And so it really was a giant boost to the company. And then what happened is, that the people who made it, Nintendo, realized it was such a big thing that they decided they were just going to make it themselves rather than Wizards. So Wizards—we were there for the early years of Pokémon, but then they started doing it themselves. So it was still made, but not by us anymore.

But that led to a few really crazy big years. And then during that time, during that same time, Peter had gotten the idea of—we had known early on that organized play was important. One of the big things that—one of Wizards’ I think big contributions to the gaming world is really this idea that organized play is crucial to a game. And we had spent a lot of money and we had, you know, a Pro Tour, and we had an entire system set up for sanctioning, and that really what we were saying was we wanted to make sure you had places to play.

And so Peter came up with this idea of “Well, what if we make the places to play?” And the idea was, what if we got into the retail business? And that what if Wizards of the Coast sold games? In retail. And so what we did was, we first tried it out in our building, and so we had the very first tournament center as in our building.

In fact it’s funny, the way I met my wife was Lora was the person who was working nights at the tournament center. And R&D would all go down, they had a LAN set up, a computer set up, and they would—I think they were playing World of Warcraft—or not World of Warcraft, sorry. Warcraft. And at some point they started playing Starcraft. Anyway, I wasn’t that interested, and so instead of playing, I would end up talking to Lora who was the receptionist. Anyway, time well spent. But that’s a topic for another podcast.

Anyway, so we branched out into doing stores. And it coincided with us doing Pokémon, which was super hot. And so early on, our stores were exploding, but part of it was we were like the place to get Pokémon. And so we made a bunch of different stores, we ended up buying a series of stores called Game Keeper, which ironically is where I worked when I first discovered about Magic. Because people kept coming in and asking me for it. Anyway.

And so we got into the business, the retail business. It ended up—once Pokémon sort of went away, that it was artificially inflating it, so it ended up not being as good a value, but it did sort of help show us the importance of tournament play.

But anyway, after that, around that time, was when Hasbro showed up. Hasbro showed up on the scene. Now I think the intent all along had been that, you know, we were a game company, but you know, Peter and company had been looking for suitors to purchase, to purchase Wizards, and Hasbro seemed like a really good fit. Hasbro was a game company. You know. I mean it was a toy company, but it had a very strong game component.

In fact, I think if you sort of just named famous games, you know, the vast majority of them, you know, Monopoly, the U.S. version of Scrabble, Clue, I mean, anything by Parker Brothers. I mean, you know, I mean Milton Bradley and Parker Brothers and, you know, the vast majority of—of games, when you think of like games, you know, Trivial Pursuit, all sorts of stuff were made by Hasbro. And it seemed like a really good fit. And so Hasbro purchased Wizards, I think that was in ’97 is my guess, it was either ’97 or ’98. But anyway, we were purchased by Hasbro.

Now a lot of people always ask “How much has that impacted us?” Not that much. I mean it’s helped us in that we have Hasbro to like—resources of Hasbro, when we’re trying to do certain things, but the thing is, Hasbro’s audience and our audience are a bit different. We service what we call the core gamer, which means our audience is people who game as a hobby. They love gaming. Gaming is what they do. Gaming is a priority for their—you know, their free time. And so our audience is super-dedicated, and they want games that are—you know, have a lot going on. You know.

Like, Magic is a complicated game. You know, there’s a lot of moving pieces. There’s a lot to it. Well, for a hardcore gamer, that’s fine. They embrace that. They love that. But Hasbro’s used to making—you know, a lot of Hasbro’s stuff is about mass market and advertising and selling to kids, you know. It’s a very different audience. You know.

So when they bought us, you know, we were—they were expanding out and trying to do a different kind of games, and we were something that was a little foreign to them. And so they’ve done a really good job of respecting that we are sort of our own company, and—I mean, clearly we’re part of Hasbro, so there’s, you know, there’s connections, and it’s not like, you know—there’s definitely an influence of being bought by Hasbro, but it hasn’t really changed the day to day, you know, they kind of let us do what we do, and that reason is they know we’re good at doing what we do. That’s one of the reasons they bought us.

And so what happened over the years was, from the early sort of wild years is, little by little we were sort of hiring people whose expertise was in whatever field they had. You know. Like I say, I love Carol, Carol was awesome, Carol was actually very good at sales. But no matter what, at the end of the day, you know, she wasn’t someone who had been trained in sales. You know. And that—I think that that was one of the shifts is, you sort of saw us moving away from people who were smart and passionate to people who—I mean were also smart and passionate, but had training in the field.

And so I think over time, Wizards got a little more corporate. I don’t mean that in a bad way, you know,  I think a company ages. I think if you look at, like, any company kind of the metaphor is like—in the early years, it’s the kid years, the teen years, where you’re wild, and at some point you settle down a little bit and you sort of—you figure out what you’re doing. You know.

And at Hasbro—we have had a number of presidents. Peter was our very first president at Hasbro. The second president was—see if I can tax my memory. Well, it was a—it was a former boss of Peter’s. Why am I blanking on his name? He brought him in because he was—when Peter finally left the company, he took over. Why am I blanking on his name? And then after him was a guy named Chuck who was from Hasbro, and then after Chuck was a guy named Loren, and then after Loren was Greg? Is that right? Am I forgetting somebody?

So Greg Leeds is the current CEO, who also came through Hasbro, who’s awesome, Greg is really great. And Greg really focused the company. You know, one of the things that I think Hasbro over the years—not Hasbro, Wizards of the Coast over the years has definitely branched out and tried different things, and that one of the things we’re doing right now is staying very focused and kind of where our strengths lie, and that it’s very easy as a game company to go “Oh, we can make this game and that game!”

But, you know, we’ve been trying to—really what we’ve been trying to do is say “Here’s the things we do well,” and Magic is one of them. “We do Magic well. Well, let’s do Magic the best we can do Magic.” And a lot of—notice the last five years, we’ve expanded a lot of what we can do. You know. We have a lot more supplemental products, and we experiment with a lot more different things, and we’ve gotten into doing more with presentation and experience design, and, you know, we’ve really sort of doubled down on Magic. And that was a lot of Greg’s doing, which I think is awesome, in that “Hey, I think we do Magic awesome, let’s put our energy in making Magic the best it can be.”

So—it’s interesting. Like I said, this October I will have been at Wizards of the Coast for 18 years. And it is—it’s funny, I mean, I remember the early days, you know, where, I mean, when I first got to the company, I was young, I never—I almost never went home. Like I would come, I would work, then, you know, we would play games late night, we would screw around—whatever we do, mostly it was at Wizards, you know.

Like one of the things we used to do was we had a game where we would get hockey sticks and we would get office chairs and a little ball, and we had this giant room where the (???) would be, and we’d play like office hockey. And the idea was you had to stay in your chair, which you’d wheel around, and you had to hit the ball, and then—we used to get yelled at by Facilities because like “Could you keep the ball off the ceiling?” We’d keep damaging the tiles in the ceiling.

But I mean the early days were just much more a wild west sort of feel. It was fun, and I was glad I was here for it, but also it’s kind of nice now that it’s, like, I really enjoy that we—we sort of got a little better. The early days was wild in the sense that there’s a lot of freedom but also wild in the sense of we just did lots of weird things and, you know, I like our focus now, rather than sort of just off and doing different things.

What else can I say about Hasbro? Or not Hasbro, about Wizards of the Coast. So we moved buildings one more time, across the street. We were in our last building for ten years, and then our lease came up and we ended up moving across the street. So we didn’t go far. We stayed in Renton, other than the Peter’s Basement days we’ve been in Renton the whole time, it’s a suburb of Seattle, and so we’ve never moved more than a couple blocks away. I mean, like, the first building is like three or four blocks away from our current building.

And the—trying to think of any other news of Hasbro. What did I forget? I keep saying Hasbro when I mean Wizards of the Coast. I’m almost to work, I’m trying to think of anything I’m forgetting about, about the history of Hasbro—there are a lot of people involved. Here’s one of the things I find fascinating. So my entire time in the game industry, eighteen years, entire time, has been at Wizards of the Coast.

And I can go to conventions, in fact—there was a convention once, for a while Gen Con had a West Coast version, and the prerelease for Unhinged was held at like the West Coast Gen Con. And so I had a break, so I dressed up like a donkey and ran the tournament, so I had a break in between that, and I was walking around, looking at booths, and like every booth or every other booth I knew somebody because even though I’ve never left Wizards, that Wizards had such a—an influx on the game industry, that it’s like, I—you can’t name a game company where I don’t know somebody, because every game company has somebody that worked at Wizards. Some of them have a whole bunch of people that worked at Wizards. And so it’s interesting.

I feel like—one of the things that says if you just stay at Grand Central Station, you’d meet everybody you ever knew is one of the lines. The idea that everybody at one point in their life goes to Grand Central Station. And I feel like, you know, almost every game employee at some point ends up at Wizards of the Coast. And it’s amazing how many people I know, and I’ve only worked at one company.

And it’s been awesome, because the—the—my time at Wizards of the Coast has been an interesting sort of—in some ways I got a chance to see—I feel like I’ve been at multiple game companies, but all the (???) of one. And that the different periods of time were such different things. Like I had the opportunity to work for a company that did retail stores, and I worked for a company that had a game that was like a fad among kids that was just, you know, a national phenomenon, you know, and I had a chance to work at a company that—that had stores where we made games, you know, and I had my hand in helping out with board games, and  you know, I really have designed a lot of different kind of games while all being at the same company.

And the thing that I also love about Wizards of the Coast is, and this is one of the things that Wizards has never lost, the thing that Lora said when she came in, whenever, eighteen and a half years ago, which was “Hey, this is a fun place to work.” You know. And that one of the reasons I think I’ve stuck around as long as I have, I mean partly it’s I love Magic, and I love what I do, so those are important, but another part is, Wizards of the Coast is a fun place to work. You know.

I love the people, I love the spirit, I mean it’s just a company that, like, you know, tries to do good, and really, really is a company for gamers. That like it’s a company by gamers for gamers, I like to say, you know, that it’s a bunch of people that like all love games and love what we do. And I don’t know how often, I mean, I’m guessing it’s rare, but, you know, to work someplace where you work with a bunch of people, that you all love the thing you’re making. And you honest to God love the thing you are making. I hope it’s other places, because it’s such an awesome feeling, but it is neat. I love sitting in the pit and working with everybody in Magic.

And everybody who works on Magic pretty much came to work on Magic because they loved Magic. That was their entry level to work on Magic. It started with a love of the game. You know. And that almost everybody now, with a few rare exceptions like Bill, like, we’re Magic players first. You know, like I was a Magic player before I was a Wizards employee, you know. And that I came to Wizards because I loved Magic. And because I loved games. And it is neat to be at a company which has the spirit and the, you know, it’s just someone who embraces—who embraces having fun.

And like I also enjoy that my job is fun. You know. That—I mean, our Nerf wars aren’t as plentiful as they once were, but we still have game days. We still do Nerf stuff, we still do Nerf wars every once in a while. You know. That we—I know that we’ll take time to just go play games and see games, and that you know, a big part of the philosophy of our company is, you know, know your audience, and, you know, we go out of our way to travel to stuff so we can meet people and talk to them firsthand. You know.

And that the culture is—it’s an awesome culture. It’s a nice culture. And that—I like the fact that I like the people I work with. I like the fact that, you know, we all have this common bond, and this common interest, and common love of Magic and I think that shines through. I think one of the reasons Magic is as good as it is is because you have people so passionate working on it, that really really care about the game as an entity unto itself. You know.

I’ve said this before, but I’m not sure I’ve said it on my podcast, but I owe Magic a lot. A lot. I mean, Magic has got me my dream job, introduced me to my wife, helped me build my dream house, gave me my family, I mean Magic has given me a lot. I’ve traveled the world, you know, I get to be a little celebrity, a big fish in a little pond, it’s fun. And all that is because of Magic. And so I want to do right by the game. And I want to do right by the company. I, like I said, I enjoy Wizards of the Coast, and it has been through a lot of changes, and it’s been interesting to watch those changes happen, but it is cool. It is—I’m glad that I’ve been here, and I’m glad that I was able to do today, spend today running through the history of the company. Because I think Wizards of the Coast is a pretty awesome company.

So anyway, I am now here at work, at Wizards of the Coast, so now that I’m at Wizards of the Coast I cannot talk about Wizards of the Coast any longer. I must go work. So I hope you guys enjoyed my little, uh—I don’t know, (???) through the history of Wizards of the Coast today. And I guess it’s time to go make the Magic.