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 thought I would answer a question that I
get a lot. Which is, “What is the hardest part of your job?” And the answer is,
and this is an easy one, I get asked this all the time, the hardest part of my
job is the amount of secrets I have to keep!
Basically, what my job is is, I and the rest of R&D are
trying to make an exciting game. Something that we think players will get
really excited about. And so we do that, we come up with it, but we work far
ahead.
And so for example, for example, this week I’m going to be
going later in the week to Comic Con. Now, for you guys that happened probably
two months ago, so I—so in June of 2013, I handed over my file to the
development team. Hands off, June 2013.
So July 2014 is San Diego Comic Con, so that’s 13 months
later. That’s the first time I’m even allowed to mention anything about Khans
of Tarkir. Other than the little tiny teaser I did this spring. It’s the first
time I’m allowed to talk about it at all.
And to really talk about it, I can’t do that until it
releases in October of 2014. So when I hand over a set, there is at least a
16-month gap between me handing it over and being able to talk about it.
And remember, by that point I have worked on it for a year
in design and up to a year in pre-design. What we now call exploratory design.
So I’ve been working on—and sometimes I even plotted some stuff before that. So
like, there are sets in which I figured out what we’re doing, because I plotted
out the seven-year plan, and then like it’s years and years and years before I
can talk about it. And that by far is the hardest thing I have to do.
And the reason is, we really, really pride ourselves on
coming up with things we think will excite the player base. And remember, I’m a
Magic player. Before I was a Magic R&D person, before I made Magic, I played Magic. And I still get excited.
I remember—like when things happen, I the Magic player will get excited. I’m
like, “Oh, that’s so awesome!” But one of the things that’s really hard is,
like we’ll come up with an idea. Like I’ll be in a design meeting. Maybe I’m in
exploratory design. And I come up with a really cool idea or my team comes up
with a really cool idea.
And we’re like, “We’ve got to do that!” It could be three
years, four years before the public ever sees it. And so like what I’ve learned
to do is, I’ve got to kind of hold it in, and just keep in my excitement, and
then bottle it up and wait for when I finally get to tell. Because one of the
things people always say is, whenever I get to tell stuff, I seem so excited.
And they’re like, “You can’t possibly be that excited.” And I’m like, “No, I’ve
kept it pent in for so long!”
So today I’m going to talk about some of the secrets I had
to keep, and sort of walk through just different things I had to do. And
there’s some funny stories of just sort of watching people come to realize
things. And a few of the stories today were secrets that leaked out a little
bit. Anyway, today is all about secret-keeping. And like I said, what I
consider the hardest part of my job.
Okay. We’ll go back to the very beginning. So I first get to
Wizards, and I am on Alliances.
That’s the first team I worked on. Now if you remember, Alliances had the pitch cards. So Force of Will being the most
famous. So the idea was that you could, without spending mana, you
could discard a card, and a few cards, like Force of Will, you also pay a life,
to get an effect without having mana. You could be tapped out and still cast
these cards.
Now that—and I mean, it’s funny how we look back, at things
that become such established parts of the game don’t seem all that crazy. But
at the time, it was crazy! I talked about this during my Alliances podcast. [NLH—Not
transcribed.] There were members of the customer service that felt like we
were breaking a rule that just could not be broken in Magic. So I knew we were doing something awesome.
In fact, the story behind Force of Will real quickly, is so
I’m on the team, the card was made. And it had some name, and I didn’t like the
name. I thought the name—like I knew, I knew I knew I knew that this was the
card. Usually in the set, there’s just one or two cards that just like—the beacon
of light shines on, like (sings),
like this is the card that’s going to define the set, that’s going to be the
thing that all eyes are drawn to. And like I knew it was Force of Will.
But it had some name, I forget what the name was. It was a
goofy name. It wasn’t a name that said, (sings).
And so I went to the people that were doing names, and I said, “You know, I
think this needs a better name.” And their response to me was, “Okay, come up
with a better name.” And so I spent—I don't know, I spent hours and hours like
looking for things. And finally I came up with Force of Will.
And I thought that was the best name ever. And I went back
to them, and I go, “How about Force of Will?” And they’re like, “Eh, it’s
okay.” Like, “No no no! It’s really good.” And I’m like, “Come on guys—this
needs a dynamite name, this is a dynamite name.” And I finally convinced them
to change it to Force of Will.
So anyway, that’s—oh, by the way, my little tangent. It
turns out I had two influences on Force of Will. I thought my only influence on
Force of Will, by the way, was that I named it. But it turns out, so when I do
this podcast, there’s a guy named Chris Page, who’s one of the original
playtesters. Who was one of the East Coast playtesters, who did Alliances. He was on the design team for
Alliances. So whenever I do a
podcast, he always listens to it, and then he sends me information to tell me
things that I did not know.
So one of the things he told me was, he was one of the
editors. I did a puzzle book. And he and I think Beth Morrison were two of the
editors for my book. And then Charlie Catino also. The three of them worked on
my book. And I would—Charlie I guess was my editor, and then Chris and
BethMo—Beth Morrison, who was one of the Rules Managers way back when, would
test my deck and make sure that it was working within the rules. They were sort
of puzzle testers.
Anyway, so it turns out that my puzzle inspired Chris, that
he was trying to think of a way that when you had like a lockdown situation,
that you could have an answer. And so Chris told me that one of the
inspirations for the pitch cycle was my puzzles. So indirectly—anyway, I
thought that was very nice. Very sweet of Chris to say that. So anyway. Sorry.
Going on a tangent.
So I knew, I knew I knew I knew, that Force of Will was
going to be this thing. And like I said, I worked really hard to make sure it
had a cool name, and—oh, in fact, the other thing is, Force of Will—oh no no.
I’m thinking of a different thing. Sorry. Anyway, so I’m excited. And I want
this set to come out.
So I get there in [1995]
and we were working on Alliances.
And we handed it off. Now, it turns out that the lapse between when we turn
things over and when they got it to the public was shorter back then. Because I
worked on it in the fall of [1995] and it came out in the spring of [1996].
We’re way ahead now. But even then, even then it’s like I did it, and I don't
know what it was—six months, nine months wait. It seemed like eternity. I’m
like, “Oh, come on, come on, come out, come out, come out!”
And I remember that the prerelease for Alliances happened at a Pro
Tour. On the boat. In Los Angeles. We always used to do the Pro Tours—like I
had a whole podcast, Tales
from the Boat. The Queen Mary.
So we were on the Queen Mary. It was one of the early Pro
Tours. And that at the event we had the prerelease. I mean, the prerelease
wasn’t just there, but one of the places the prerelease was held was on the
boat.
And I remember watching people open up packs and I just—like
one of the things that’s awesome, that’s really really fun, is—especially when I was younger, is I used
to go to every prerelease I could get my hands on. Because I love watching
people open cards.
I mean, it’s a little harder now with a family of five, I
get out as much as I can and really try
to get the sense that I did, but I used to go to every prerelease. And that one
of my favorite things is watching people open cards.
So ooh. So I’ll transition to a different story is, in Invasion we did the split cards. So for those that don’t know the history of the split cards, I think I talked
about this during the Invasion
podcast [NLH—Not transcribed], but
the real short version is that I originally came up with the split cards for Unglued
2. That was the Un-set that
never got made. And the inspiration for them was, the most popular card from Unglued had been B.F.M. Which
was a creature so big, a 99/99 creature, that it had to go on two cards.
So I reversed it. I said, “Well, people like a Magic card so big that it’s on two
cards, how about a Magic card so
small that two of them fit on one card.” And I just came up with the idea of
cards that you have two options, you could do Card A or Card B. Unglued 2 got killed. But I really liked
the concept, so when we were doing Invasion,
I went to Bill, who was in charge of Invasion.
I was on the Invasion team.
And I said, “Bill.” I go, “These would be perfect.” Now, it
was a long uphill battle, but eventually we got them made the way I had always
intended, two small cards on a card. And then, and then, somebody got ahold of
a printing sheet from the printer’s. And it was up on… I don't know. It was on
the internet. Somehow, someone had pictures of the press sheet. And on it was
the split cards. And I was deflated. We had purposely not shown the split cards
in any of the previews, that we wanted it to be this—there was five split cards
at uncommon in the set. We wanted it to be this total, “Oh my God, what is
this?” And we didn’t tell anybody about it.
And so there it was, it was this—like one of the things that
I’ve talked about, I wrote a whole article about this, is how I feel about leaks.
Here’s my official stance on leaks, which is we work really hard to create
something that’s exciting. And a lot of what we do, a lot of what I do is to
try to build hype before a set comes out. And I want to maximize exciting
players. I want players to be at a fever pitch when the set comes out, so
they’re sooo excited for the set.
And to do that, you have to be very careful sort of how you
put out information. So that you build up to what you want. And so we spend a
lot of time thinking about how we put out things.
So when things leak, when things come out that aren’t
supposed to come out, and they always come out not in the order you want, and
sometimes with missing information, and it’s just not ideal. I know people say,
“Oh no, it’s awesome, it makes me more invested,” and like, look. We will put
out information. We know you want information. And we will put it out. And we
put it out a lot of different places so that you can learn through social
media.
But when we actually plan it, it comes out much much better
than when it kind of—like when it gets spoiled, it’s just somebody kind of
taking whatever they see, taking the most interesting thing, not putting it in
context, and just throwing it out there. Sometimes getting it incorrect. So
anyway. I’m not a fan of leaks. Not a fan.
Okay. So in Invasion,
the sheet comes out. And the split cards—there’s a picture of a sheet, of the
uncommon sheet with the split cards on it. And so players are talking about on
the internet, “What are these?” And it was hilarious, which is they were
bending over backwards to come up with any reason it would be something other
than what it just was.
Like, my favorite was the people that thought we hadn’t yet
decided—that these were test sheets, and we hadn’t decided which of the two
cards we wanted. So we put them both on there to signify that one of these two
would be on the sheet.
Anyway. So it gets out there, and people don’t know quite
what to make of it because it’s printed weird. So anyway, I go to the Invasion prerelease. So the Invasion prerelease I went to, Wizards
of the Coast used to have a series of stores, and in the U District, the
University of Washington district, there was a big tournament center. And in
the basement we had a giant place to play and we’d have big prereleases there.
So I went to the tournament center to watch the prerelease.
So I go down in the basement. Packed, packed with people playing
in the Invasion prerelease. And I
watch this one person. And it is clear like talking to players that a lot—there
was a lot of talk about the split cards. But I realized that not everybody
knew.
So I’m watching this one guy open a pack. And he opens a
pack, and one of the tells that someone’s looking at a split card is they tend
to turn it sideways. Because to read it upright it has to be sideways. So I see
a guy open a pack, I see him turn the card sideways. And his brow furrows, and
he’s like staring at it.
And then all of a sudden like the light bulb goes off in his
head. Like, he figures out what it is. And this giant smile comes to his face.
And he taps his friend on the shoulder, and he shows his friend the card, and
the friend has the same like furrowed brow, like “What is that?” and then his
friend like says something and then his friend smiles.
And it was just like watching people discover that. Watching
the moment of discovery. That is one of my favorite things. So people always
ask, “During preview season, do you pay attention to what people say?” Yes, I
pay attention to what people say! It’s like, “I worked really hard on this! I
want to see what people have to say about my thing.”
Now, be aware, it requires having a thick skin. In general,
dealing with the public requires a thick skin because everybody will love
something and everybody will hate something. No matter what you do. That you
may spend hours and days and months and years like perfectly crafting and
making something you are so proud of, and someone will read it and two seconds
later go, “That’s horrible. I hate it.”
Now, the important thing is, I try to understand why people
say that. Sometimes it’s a gut reaction. Sometimes they just think it’s weak
when it’s not. And so it’s very, very interesting to me to always listen. One
of the things that I try to do is, I like hearing feedback. Even negative
feedback, because within negative feedback is honest-to-God constructive
criticism. Not always worded constructively, but when people say things,
there’s things that they mean that’s important. And that you want to read
through the emotion to the underlying—like what is it that’s really driving.
What are they trying to say?
And some people won’t say it nicely, and as I say on my blog,
I prefer people to say things nicely. There’s no reason you have to be rude.
Like, if you dislike something, I’m fine with you saying, “I dislike it.” In
fact, I don’t even take offense to someone saying, “You know what? I played
that, I wasn’t real fond of that.”
R&D does that all the time. Like, I will spend a lot of
time and energy making new mechanics, someone will play it and I go, “What do
you think?” They go, “Yeah, that was horrible. I hated that.” And that’s kind
of how we function in R&D. So I’m used to criticism. I’m not saying people
need to like everything. And if people don’t like something, I want to know
why. Part of—one of my goals is, I don’t mind making mistakes, I just don’t
want to make the same mistake. You know, if I do something and it doesn’t work
out, I go, “Okay, well why?” So next time I don’t do it that way. Let me make a
new mistake.
Okay. Talking secrets. Okay. Another big one was Scars of Mirrodin. Okay. So I talked
about this—did I do a Scars of Mirrodin
podcast yet? I’m not sure. [NLH—Yes.] Part
I, Part
II, Part
III, Part
IV. But anyway. So what happened
was, ever since Legends came out, in Legends there were two
cards. That had the poison mechanic.
And the poison mechanic was, when you hit the opponent with
the creature, it gave them a poison counter, and then if they had ten poison
counters they lost the game. So it was an alternate win condition. But a
flavorful alternate win condition.
So I love poison. I said, “Woohoo, poison!” And I think
there was one card I think in The Dark
[NLH—Yes].
So I get to Wizards, and Alliances
doesn’t have any poison in it. The next set is Mirage, Mirage has one
poison creature. [NLH—Two,
actually.] Then I think Visions
has one
poison creature. And then R&D decides, “You know what? We’re not doing
poison anymore.”
And I’m like, “What?! What?! No! No!” And so I argued with
them, like, “Oh no, poison’s really cool, poison’s really cool.” And they’re
like, “Ehh…”
I mean, the thing at the time was, poison had always been
really, really weakly. And my argument was, “Look, people love it. It’s
horrible and people love it. That’s a good sign! If people absolutely like must
play it and it’s horrible, that speaks volumes of it.”
That’s my big argument why we did tribal in the first place,
which was people were making tribal decks when they were horrible. They were
just terrible. But people enjoyed playing them. And that’s a sign of something
that like people really emotionally connect to. Anyway, I lost that fight. So
that was back in—we were designing Mirage
back in ’95, because it came out in ’96.
So I vowed, then and there, that I would try to bring poison
back to Magic. And then in Unglued 2 I tried to bring it back and
then that got put on hiatus, and then in Tempest—sorry,
in Tempest I tried to bring it back, and
that got taken out of the set in development. In Unglued 2 I tried to bring it back, that got put on hiatus.
But I had—from the moment I knew that poison was coming
back, which is early in design, to the point at which the public could see it,
I think was three years. Three years! Now imagine you love something. Because I
love Magic. Magic is my favorite game, hands down. And I mean it’s a passion,
obviously I love my job if you can’t tell that.
And one of the reasons I love my job is, I’m doing
something—I have a great affinity for Magic.
I believe Magic is a great force of
good in the world. I believe it brings happiness to people, it brings people
together, it teaches good life skills, that it’s just a good wonderful thing.
And that I want to make it as good as I can. I want to bring fun things to it.
And it was my quest to bring poison back to Magic.
So I had done it. I had finally done it. And there’s a point
at which, like, it was locked. It was in the set. It wasn’t leaving. And like
early, early design, I didn’t know, that it had to make it through the rest of
design, it had to make it through development. But there’s a point where I’m
watching the slide show, and they show me—I remember when I saw cards up on
the—whatever I see in the slide show, that’s like—it’s done. Like, we’re done.
There’s art. There’s names. There’s flavor text. It’s done.
So when I see—when I’m not sure if something’s going to make
it to print, it’s when I see it in the slide show that I finally let a sigh
out. Like, “(sigh) It made it.” And
so when I see the slide show, which is still months—I mean, months and months
and months before the public will ever know. I was like, “Okay. I did it! I did
it! Woohoo!”
And then, here’s the hard part. This is one of the trickiest
things is, let’s take poison for example, is I’ll do poison. And I’ll be an
advocate on social media, I’m like, “I love poison, poison’s great, I want to
have poison back,” people go, “You should poison back!” And I’ll go, “Yeah,
yeah, I want to bring poison back.” But behind the scenes I’ve brought poison
back, and that—so people will bug me to get poison when I have behind the
scenes made poison! When poison’s in a set!
And then I have to act all natural because I can’t tell them
I made poison, poison’s in a set. So that’s one of the hard things, is that
sometimes I’ll do something, and like for example, I get asked all the time for
things that people walk. People wanted us to return to Ravnica. I wanted to
return to Ravnica. People—there are things people want, and I’m like, “I know,
I know we have it!”
And they’ll come on, and they’ll plead with me. And they’ll
plead with me how much they want it and how great they think it will be. And I just have to like stay mum. Okay,
another great reveal, another awesome reveal was Unhinged. I talked about this a little bit in my podcast
on Unhinged.
So what happened was, we wanted to do a fun reveal. Because
I get asked all the time—at the time, for example, we had made Unglued, people were like, “When are you
making a second Un-set?” And I had
done Unglued 2, but that hadn’t
happened. And so like I wanted to do some fun reveal.
And so the idea we came up with is, the timing worked out so
that on April Fool’s Day, I could announce it. So I did
this article where I said, “Hey, guess what! Unhinged is coming out! A second Un-set’s coming out! It’s called Unhinged!”
And then I did it like—the article is written like, “Hey, it’s
coming out! Unless this is an April Fool’s joke! But, like if it did come out,
wouldn’t this be a perfect time to do it?” And so I did this thing where I
really sort of like tried to make it sound like maybe I’m joking, maybe I’m not.
And like I said, we did a poll, and 50.1% believed it was coming out, and 49.9%
believed it was an April Fool’s joke. Which is about as good as you can get for
splitting the audience.
But that was another one where like, people had been asking
forever, and like we did it, but I had to hold it in. And like I said, the
cool, cool, cool part of my job is, it is so much fun making decisions where I
just know it’s going to bring happiness to people. You know what I’m saying?
Like, one of the things—I’ll give this as an example. Return to Ravnica, we announced Return
to Ravnica, this is just the name, at PAX East a couple years ago. The PAX
East before it was going to come out.
And we had a
videotape that we recorded of us
telling. And in the videotape, which we showed around, there’s like two people right
in front of the camera like hugging. Like you know we announced it, and like
they’re so excited they’re hugging each other. That feels good. That feels
good.
Like when you get to do something, and you just can see the
euphoria—there is no greater joy in my job than just seeing people happy. Just
seeing people so excited by what you’re doing.
And one of the things that I have a lot of fun, I’ll admit,
is I have a great time teasing the audience. Like I have information, I know
they want it, I know I can’t—I know there’s a time and place I’m allowed to
tell them. And so I have tried to perfect the art form of teasing information.
And my blog’s the
perfect place, by the way. So if you never listen, I have a blog called Blogatog
where I answer questions, I answer a lot of questions. And wherever I can, I
sneak in little bits of information. Sometimes I’m more open about it,
sometimes you realize I’m giving you a clue. Sometimes I hide it. Because I
answer so many questions that people can ask very blatant, on-the-nose
questions, and I can sort of go, “Yeah, maybe!” And people don’t necessarily
realize that I’m giving them a clue. Like I say, I can hide some of my clues in
plain sight.
So one of the things that’s fun, I know people do this, is
go back and read old Blogatog things. And you’re like, “He just said that! He
just said that! How did we miss this? He just said it.” And I can do that and
it’s kind of fun.
But like I said, one of the big joys of—the hardest thing
about my job is having to hold things in, the joy of my job—or one of the joys
of my job is getting to finally tell people. And like I said, people sometimes
doubt my excitement. People actually say, “Is he really that excited? I don’t
think one human being can get that excited.” And then people who know me go, “No,
he really gets that excited.” I do not feign my excitement.
Now, I’m easy to excite. But—I mean it’s not—to be fair,
part of my job is to figure out what I think will excite players, and then I do
that. And then I’m excited because I know you guys will be excited. And like I
stressed earlier, I am a Magic
player. I too get excited. Like when we do things that are cool, that I know Magic players will love, well, I am a Magic player. I get excited.
And that I think—to be honest, so people have asked about
the “special sauce.” What is the special sauce of Wizards R&D? I’m going to
tell you. Not even Wizards R&D. Magic
in general. Because we spread it around, the secret sauce, beyond just R&D.
The secret to the secret sauce is having people who make the
game who love the game. Because one of the things—and I’ve talked about this in
my podcast, that I feel responsibility to Magic
that supercedes my responsibility to Wizards of the Coast.
Now, it’s my job, I’m paid good money. I mean, I believe
that I need to be a good employee. And I am. But there is almost like something
that goes beyond that. Magic has a
force. As just a force of good in the universe, it’s done so much good for me. I
mean, it’s given me my dream job. I met my wife. It’s helped me build my dream
home. I’ve traveled the world. I get to be a little mini-celebrity. It’s done
all sorts of awesome, awesome things.
And I feel like I need to pay it back. Sorry. Pay it
forward? I need to pay it forward and pay it back. I guess (???) both
expressions. Which both actually apply. That to me I feel like I’m one of the key
people guiding this awesome, awesome force of good in the world. That it brings
happiness. And it just—it does lots and lots of good things.
And I’ve shared stories of just—in fact, I did an article
not long ago where I asked people to talk about positive impact Magic has had on their lives. And
I put a whole bunch of letters up. And each letter was only 200 words long
or less. And I put up like, over 6,000 words of letters.
And I got 14,000 words of letters. And I just couldn’t put
all the letters. But I mean, it is really humbling to read letters where you
find out the impact the game has on people. And the fact that I get to be one
of the people that does that, it’s a great honor, and it’s something
I take very seriously. And that I feel duty-bound to make Magic awesome.
I mean, that goes beyond my job. It is my job, and obviously
for my job I want to be awesome too, but just as a personal—almost like a—an ethical
thing. It’s just core to my being that I want Magic to do good.
And I believe that R&D feels that way. That R&D sees
Magic as something over and above
just being a job. That it is something special that we are the caretakers of.
And we treat that really, really seriously. I mean, the amount of time and
energy that we go over every nook and cranny. There’s not a decision that we
make that we do not agonize over. That we do not argue over. That we do not—that
one of the things that we do is we talk about everything. Everything goes under
a fine-toothed comb.
Because people ask me all the time. I’m in charge—I’m the Head
Designer. Why am I constantly having to fight for my things? And the reason is,
that’s how we get things good. If just I could rubber-stamp stuff and it goes
through, it wouldn’t be as good. I have to prove that everything I do, doesn’t
matter that I’ve been doing this job for 19 years, I’ve got to prove that every
single thing I do is worthy. And if it’s not worthy, it ain’t going in.
And I’m not above that. I have to make sure that everything we
do is of the uppermost tier. The reason—I hands-down believe Magic is the best game ever made. The
best game ever made. And the reason for that is that there are so many people pouring
their heart and soul into making it. And there’s so many people playing it who
are giving us feedback.
Like one of the things you don’t—maybe you understand, maybe
you don’t, but the reason I do Blogatog, the reason that I do all the social
media that I do is, to be Head Designer, to continue to evolve Magic, and Magic is an ever-evolving game, I need to understand what it’s doing.
I need to understand who’s playing it and why they’re playing and what’s fun
about it. And I need to keep my finger on the pulse.
And that’s why I do so much social media. Like, I want to
hear from you. And the reason that Magic
is awesome is A. the people working on it I think really really care, and the people
playing it really care! And you guys give us amazing feedback.
And that is a big part of why I think Magic keeps getting better is, we keep getting feedback from our audience
and applying it. And that we just keep—we constantly innovate. I talk about how
creative work is innovation, well Magic
is nothing but innovation. It’s just a game that constantly innovates. Just as
we innovate to make the game, the game itself innovates to make it better. It’s
a self-innovating game. Why is Magic
so awesome? Because it constantly improves itself.
Anyway. I got a little off-topic there. Although not that
much off-topic. But that, my friends, is all the secrets about the secrets! Or
some of the secrets about the secrets. But I had fun sharing with you today,
and like I said—next time you see me and I seem really excited, and you want to
doubt that I’m excited, I swear to you I actually, actually am very excited. I
both am very excitable and I love, love, love what I do. And I love Magic. And I love telling all of you
about it, because it’s cool stuff.
So anyway, thanks for joining me, I’ve parked the car, and
it’s time for me to be making Magic.
Talk to you guys next time.
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