Okay, I’m pulling out of my driveway! We all know what that
means! It’s time for another Drive to Work. Okay. Well, it turns out Matt
Cavotta is having car problems, and needed to take his car into the shop. So we
all know what that means! Carpool with Matt Cavotta! Okay. So I’m going to go
pick up Matt, and what I’ve done is, I’ve chosen a topic that I thought would
be a good one for me and Matt to discuss.
So last time I drove Matt to work, we talked about flavor
text. But this time, we’re going to talk about names. Now, for those that
don’t remember, Matt has actually worked at Wizards twice. The first time I
worked at Wizards, he was on the creative team in charge of names and flavor
text. Now he’s in charge of the look and feel of Magic packaging. Maybe one day I’ll do a podcast and talk about
that. But today, we’re talking about his old job.
Now the interesting thing is, I, back in the day, was also
very involved in names and flavor text. In fact, for both Unglued, Unhinged, and Odyssey, I was in charge of the flavor
text. The names and the flavor text. So when we talk names today, both Matt and
I have had some experience naming things.
Also, one of the things that we’ll talk about today is that
in design, sometimes, I will make honest attempts at names. We’ll talk about
that when I pick him up. That part of doing design sometimes is trying to get
the right name. There’s a naming person if that doesn’t work out, to give it
the right name. But we’ll talk about that today.
Anyway, I’m on the way to pick him up. He lives very nearby,
so I will get him momentarily. But anyway, I always like having Matt in the
car, and when I found out yesterday that he—so one of the things you have to
understand is, what will happen is, Matt will talk to me at work and say, “Oh,
I need a ride, can I get a ride with you?” And I’m always like, “You up for a
podcast?” And he’s like, “Sure!”
I think Matt enjoys the podcasts. And I’ve gotten really good feedback. People
like when Matt is carpooling with me. Just a little different. Change things
up. Most of my podcast is me babbling on. But then you get me and Matt babbling
on together, so a little different dynamic.
Oh… I’m caught in traffic from school, because I’m leaving
right—normally what happens is, for those that care, is I get my kids off and
ready for school, and after they go then I hop in the car and I go. But if I go
right after, if I go too quickly, I get caught up in school traffic. Which is…
see, Matt, it turns out, lives across the street from the school.
But anyway, almost there. By the time I get there, Matt
should be ready and waiting. Anything else I can tell you to sort of set things
up? What can I tell you to set this… I don’t want to give you any good juicy
stuff that we’re going to talk about.
One of the things that I can bring up I guess is, be aware
that every year we make over 600 cards. And of the—I mean, brand-new cards. I’m
not talking about repeats. Six hundred new cards. Now, of the cards, a few of
them are reprints, in the sense that they have a new treatment but they’re the
same name. But I would say there’s at least 600 names a year that we make.
Because we make over 600 cards. Let’s assume a few of them are reprints.
So we have like 600 names to do. So that’s—Matt and I are
talking about it, Magic’s twenty
years old. At 600 names a year times twenty, that’s 12,000 names so far. I
mean, Magic has over 13,000 cards.
But let’s assume some of those are reprints. So 12,000 unique names. That’s a
lot. The English language, it’s got lots of words in it, but not an infinite
number.
And we’re going to talk today a lot about names as a
resource. I think that’s something that most people don’t think about. But when
people ask me about what are the true limitations, like what are the resources
that we have to be most careful about using up? Names are one of them. And that
a good, clean, crisp, clear name, there’s a very finite number of those.
And one of my big pet peeves is, early in Magic we wasted some really, really
good names. Especially early, early Magic.
Like one of the ones that always burns me is there’s a card in Legends called Teleport, and
it’s a horrible card. I’m like, “Really? Teleport? We burned Teleport on that
card?” There’s a bunch of ones like that.
But anyway, today we will be discussing what it takes to
make names, what exactly—what names need, what are the qualifications for
names. And then we’ll probably share a few stories about just names we liked.
Some of the cards we named and how we got the names. It’ll be a name-a-palooza
once I pick Matt up. So…
The fun part is I’m sitting here in traffic, trying to like
make—I’m trying to entertain you while not giving away the very topic I want to
discuss with Matt. So. But luckily, we’re almost there. And like I said, I
always enjoy having Matt. A. I like Matt, and I like carpooling with Matt, and
B. I like having Matt on the show. Because it is a change of pace.
I had a bunch of people ask me, by the way, if I could have
other guest stars. And the problem is—I mean, I have—Ethan Fleischer was on
once. [NLH--Not transcribed yet.] But because I drive to work, I mean Matt lives right near me, he
actually carpools with me, but it is tricky to get other people to be in the
car on my way to work. That’s why there’s not tons of guest show opportunities
with other people. If they come pu, I promise I will try to do them if they
occur. Thus far, Matt is the number one option.
Okay. I’m pulling over here. Is Matt here? Let’s see. I do
not see Matt. Where is Matt? Okay, I’ll have to go—ah, there he is. Okay.
Ladies and gentlemen, it’s Mr. Matt Cavotta! (verbal fanfare) Hey Matt!
MARK: So until you get in the car I have to do a monologue
where I set everything up. So I’ve been trying to explain who like—one of these
days we’ll have to do an interview about your other job. But this is about your
old job.
MATT: Yes.
MARK: One day we’ll talk about product packaging. A little
less enthralling than names and flavor text. So today’s topic is names. So
we’re talking about—we talked about flavor text last time. So before you got in
the car, here’s what I started with. I said names are a very valuable resource.
That if you looked at Magic, and
said “What are the things that we’re going to run out of quickest?” I don’t
think people would necessarily think of names as being one of those things. But
it is.
MATT: Well, good names.
MARK: Simple names. Yes.
MATT: Yes.
MARK: “Blank’s Blah” we can do until the end of time.
MATT: What I have found even in the job that I do now, that
card names and in some cases keywords and whatnot, even step on the toes of
other work that we do. For example, we can’t write a product tagline that uses
the word “storm” that doesn’t mean “storm.” We can’t use the word “legend”
unless it means “legend.” And those are both really good, powerful words that
are evocative and in a lot of cases would help sell a concept.
MARK: So what we could do is we could sit down with Doug and figure out the most key words we need for packaging, and start
making mechanics named after those things, and completely make your job
impossible.
MATT: A couple… it’s already pretty challenging, given that
we have what, 15,000?
MARK: It’s 13,000+ Magic
cards, I think there’s about 12,000 unique names. That’s the math I did before
we got here.
MATT: That plus all the keywords…
MARK: Right, plus there’s a hundred keywords…
MATT: It’s nutso. And the funny thing is, you want to pick
really good words for names and keywords and everything. And then you end up
stealing from yourself those really good words.
MARK: Yes.
MATT: Catch-22.
MARK: One of the things that keeps coming up, that’s kind
of, I don't know, an ethical debate among R&D, which is, is there a point
at which we reclaim words that just didn’t really… like it’s on a dumb card no
one ever plays, do we just go… what I brought up before you got in the car is
Teleport, which is a card in Legends,
no one probably ever played that card, it’s a horrible, horrible card. I’m
like, “Really? Teleport? We lost Teleport for that?” So…
MATT: It’s true. If we could go back to all the, like either
one word card names, or like singular concept card names.
MARK: Yeah.
MATT: That are on non-repeatable cards and just have those
back.
MARK: Yeah, there’s a point at which, and I was around for
this, we started realizing that names were important, and like about maybe four
or five years in we’re like, “Okay, we’ve got to be careful, we’ve got to mark
when things are supposed to be repeatable or not.” Although the problem we had
back then was, we thought things with keywords wouldn’t be repeatable, so we sort
of didn’t put some clean words on things we wanted to do. But we’ve been
better. It’s something we’ve been very… like in the file right now, when you
get handed a file to do naming, usually there’s a note saying, “We think this
is repeatable.”
MATT: Do we still use the word “promotable”? Does that even
exist anymore?
MARK: It might. So promotable means that this is a card
simple enough that it could go in a core set. And usually those are the kind of
cards that it’s very easy for us to put in another expert expansion. And one of
the things that’s tricky about names, I guess let’s get into the nuts and bolts
of making card names, is that the name of a card has a very, very important
function. Which is, it’s how everybody refers to it. Right? It’s the—a card
does a lot of things, but it all gets boiled down to one thing as far as how
everybody refers to it, and that’s the name. And the name has a lot of jobs,
right? It has a lot it has to do. So…
MATT: One of the more important things that it has to do is
roll off the tongue nicely while playing.
MARK: Yes.
MATT: One of the things we try to do, and we don’t do this
exclusively, but we try to have active spells be named as verb or verbable
nouns.
MARK: Yes.
MATT: So when you’re playing, you don’t have to say, “I play
my three-mana such-and-such,” you can say, “I Lightning Bolt you.” Or “I
do this or that to you.”
MARK: So one of the tricks, usually instants and sorceries
tend to be verbs. I mean, sometimes we get metaphorical. But usually they’re
verbs. Although one of the tricks we’ll do sometimes, and Lightning Bolt’s a
perfect example, where Lightning Bolt happens to be a noun, but “bolt” is a
verb.
MATT: Yes.
MARK: So when I say, “I Bolt you,” it sounds right, because
the word “bolt” happens to also be a verb.
MATT: Right, there is quite a bit of wordplay, at least in
the English language, on—and I’m not totally well-versed in what happens to
those once they get localized.
MARK: Real quickly, I know a little bit about this. So each
language, and we’re in eleven language now, each language has a translator, a
team of translators. And that their job is to take whatever the name is and
apply it to their local language. And each language has its own quirks they
have to deal with. But one of the things that’s funny is, and this came up a
while ago, English is a very robust language. We have more words than some
other languages. In fact, English is one of the most robust languages. And so
the problem is, we will name cards something where we’re having nuance to the
name, and other languages, like here’s a classic example is, in some other
languages, there are like maybe two or three words for a dead thing. You know,
English has like fifty words for a dead thing. And they’re like, “You’re
killing us!” Because we have, you know, “ghoul” and “zombie” and all these
different subtle-type things, and they’re like, “Guys, we have two words.”
MATT: Yeah, I imagine that there is some wonky and
uncomfortable card names in other languages. That’s where the difference
between localizing and translating comes into play, that the person in that
other country might have to attempt to hit the same sort of flavor note we’ve
created, but with their own wordplay and customs and whatever. It comes out
totally different.
MARK: It’s funny. This ended up not happening. But when Unglued 2 was going to happen, the set
that never came out, the Japanese market said that they wanted to print it. And
so we were going to translate Unglued 2
into Japanese…
MATT: That’s impossible.
MARK: And so I had this… Ron Foster, who works at our
office, by the time was the translator, the Japanese translator, I have this
document that are his notes on my names for Unglued
2, which are hilarious.
MATT: Hopeless.
MARK: Because just things in which I was making a reference,
he goes, “We don’t have that.” And one of my jokes was, there was a card in Unglued called The Cheese Stands Alone. And I was joking Japan would be The Cheese Has No Honor [NLH—…]. Okay. So we’re going to name…
MATT: Hold on, there are another couple of semi-ridiculous
constraints when it comes to naming cards.
MARK: Okay.
MATT: One of them is length. There have been times where we
were forced to use different card names than we would have chosen otherwise.
MARK: I have an example.
MATT: Because… I’m pretty sure I know which one you’re going
to give. Because the rules text and/or the mana cost soaks up all of the
available room for the words. Are you thinking of an artifact dragon?
MARK: Oh, no I’m not. Although that’s a good one. You do
that one, I’ll do my one. So you go first.
MATT: As I understand it, the card Tek.
MARK: Yeah, T-E-K.
MATT: Unassuming little three-letter name for a big crazy
monster. Came into being because the rules texts were so long…
MARK: Correct.
MATT: That a longer name would have forced a smaller font
size.
MARK: Yes. Right. In order—because it was a card in which
they had to refer to the name a bunch of times. And so the only way they could
print the rules text was if the name was super short. And so it has the name
Tek because a three-letter word was all they could fit to make the rules text
work. So here’s an example where we changed the name, by the way, is in Mirage there’s a card called Spirit of
the Night. Originally it was Spirit of the Nightstalker. And it just
didn’t fit.
MATT: Right.
MARK: And so we had to shorten it to Spirit of the Night
from Spirit of the Nightstalker.
MATT: That… there was a card in the first Ravnica that had to get a shortened name
because the mana cost was so thick. It was a Dimir card. I can’t remember what
it is. Some big, crazy monster that it needed a short name just to fit. [NLH—Grozoth, maybe?]
MARK: Yeah, something that also happens that people are
completely unaware of is sometimes the name and the mana cost will fight. And
so either we have to shorten the name or shorten the mana cost. And the way you
shorten the mana cost is to have less colored mana. So that way you can get rid
of a bubble or two.
MATT: Right.
MARK: And then there’s a fight between development and
creative of which is more important. Having it one less colored mana or having
this better name.
MATT: Oh, speaking of Ravnica
names, the original name for the dragon, Niv-Mizzet was
Niv-Mizzetstrix(?). It had like
forty-six letters. Twelve syllables. That didn’t pass the test on so many
levels. It didn’t fit, it couldn’t refer to itself in the text box, there
wasn’t enough room, and it was just unpronounceable and unspellable. It just
failed in so many ways. I remember going
through a whole bunch of iterations with other people on the editing and
creative teams to come up with something that was easily grokkable. That had
anything to do with his name.
MARK: You bring up a good point. We can segue to this point,
which is what do names have to do? I don’t think people are even aware of a lot
of the guidelines we have on names. So one is, it needs to be pronounceable.
Which you would think, by the way—there was a card called Knight Errant [NLH—emphasis on the second syllable]. That was in like the starter game. That was a 1W 2/2. And we had focus
group…
MATT: Is that how you pronounce it? I don’t pronounce it
that way. But go ahead.
MARK: Well, we had focus groups. And what we do is, we watch
people who have never played before behind the glass. And then we watch them
play. And we have no guidance. So time and time again, this name… like, they
would stop and spend minutes on this name trying to figure out how to pronounce
it. Instead of learning how to play the game. And like, (???) worst nightmare,
like the last thing you want is people like instead of focusing on learning how
to play, is like, “How is this pronounced?”
MATT: That’s gotta happen again, because Knight Errant [NLH—Emphasis on the first syllable], at
least that’s how I pronounce it, seems like it’s on the easy end of the
spectrum.
MARK: And that’s what I’m saying. That’s my point is, there
are things in which you think would be easy, and then just—like I know on
names, on proper names, one of the big problems is, words that are pre-existing
words that people know, there’s a pretty good chance they know how to pronounce
them obviously. But when you’re making up words, I mean, that’s another big
thing. We make up words, right/
MATT: Yeah.
MARK: In fact, there’s a lot of stories in which… some
classic stores in which the artists didn’t realize we didn’t make up the word,
so my favorite is Rootwalla. So Rootwalla was originally Chuckwalla. And chuckwalla’s an actual kind of lizard.
MATT: Right.
MARK: And so we gave it to an artist, and the artist didn’t
realize that it was a real type of lizard, he knew it was a lizard, but he
thought we had me it up. So he just did what he thought was a fun fantasy
lizard. And then we changed the name because it wasn’t actually a chuckwalla
anymore, and it became a rootwalla. But so right. When you make names they have
to be pronounceable, they have to be something that people usually know what it
is. One of our rules, we call these 25-cent words. We allow a little bit of
vocabulary. But we try to keep it out of common. Like the classic example
is—oh, that’s true. I can go in the carpool lane! I forgot that I’m in a
carpool today! We’re stuck in traffic and Matt is pointing out that like
everyone in the carpool lane is driving by us. And I’m like, “Oh yeah,
carpool.” So for example, in Tempest,
there is a card called Legerdemain.
MATT: Oh yeah.
MARK: So “legerdemain,” if you don’t know, is a very fancy
word that means “sleight of hand.” It’s magical…
MATT: I’m sure literally in French that’s what it…
MARK: Yeah, it might just mean that in French. And I
remember at the time, we had like this big debate, is it too big a word.
Although I…
MATT: I for one appreciate that every once in a while,
peppering in some Scripps Spelling Bee words. Frankly, I feel like Magic is a game for thinkers, and that doesn’t seem
out of bounds to me.
MARK: So I often get letters, in fact I have some great
stories—I’ll tell one story. Because this is an awesome story. People write in
to me to explain to me how Magic
helped them in some way. So one of my absolute favorite stories. So a guy
writes in, and says that he and his mother loved playing Scrabble. And
they had played—ever since he was a little kid they had played Scrabble. And he
had never beaten his mother, because she was really, really good. And as he was
getting older, he was getting better and better, so they’re in this game in
which they’re really, really close. And he plays Taiga.
MATT: Yeah?
MARK: And his mother challenges him. And he’s like, “No,
Mom, it’s a word!” And she’s like, “What is it?” He goes, “Some kind of
mountain forest.” And they looked it up, obviously it was a word, and he won. Because
taiga is a word. And he knew that because of Magic.
MATT: I saw, this is probably five or six years ago, on the
ESPN replay of the Scripps Spelling Bee in the finals, the word “autochthon.”
That we used in Ravnica. And I would
have never, never encountered that word otherwise. There’s just no way.
MARK: Yeah, I was watching Who Makes… Do You Want to Be a
Millionaire? Is that what that’s called?
MARK: Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. And the
quarter-million-dollar question was, “What is the collective name for rhinos?”
I was like, “Score!” So there’s another interesting thing we talked about,
which is, names tend to go through—like the different kind of names we’ll do
and we’ll kind of rotate. Like, during Mirage
era that I was very involved in, we got into this doing collective names thing.
Like Crash of Rhinos obviously. Except we had fun making ones up.
Because all the real-world animals, there’s a collective name. By the way, do
you know who made…
MATT: Is that when you guys got that book? Who’s the…
MARK: Yeah yeah yeah.
(unclear)
BOTH: Lipton!
(unclear)
MATT: Exaltation
of Larks.
MARK: Yes.
MATT: Yes.
MARK: So, he wrote a book, the guy who does the Actor’s Studio.
He’s an actor. He wrote a book in which he just made up [NLH—I don’t think they’re made up?], basically, “Here are the
collective names for animals,” and it’s become…
MATT: If you’re into, like, highbrow humor, it’s really
funny. It’s a really good book.
MARK: Right. So, anyway, we used a bunch of those. Like,
Murder of Crows I think is from that?
MATT: That’s for real.
MARK: Is that for real?
MATT: That’s for real.
MARK: Anyway, we had fun making up our own. I had a blast.
Like, I remember we did Cloud of Faeries and it was—it’s fun making
those up. I had a good time. Did we ever end up doing the dwarf one? We argued
forever about what a collective name of dwarfs is supposed to be.
MATT: A tankard?
MARK: I don’t know. Okay. So I realized I got off on track.
So names have to be pronounceable. People have to understand what they are. And
they have to fit on the typeline.
MATT: Yes.
MARK: And they have to not be a repeat.
MATT: Oh yeah, and also they have to be reasonably different
in pronunciation from other cards that are likely to be in play or in Standard
at the same time. You can give your Clickslither example.
MARK: Right. So in one set… what was it, Legions? [NLH—Yes.] There was Quick
Sliver and Clickslither. Which I tried to stop so badly. I just, I
couldn’t. I wasn’t involved in names at the time. And they’re like, “Ahh, it’s
no problem, one’s a goblin, one’s a sliver.” And then there was actually a Pro
Tour in which like Randy had said one, and the person thought he meant the
different one because he was in Limited, and like this whole confusion came up because
they were confused which it was.
MATT: So there have been times, quite often if you’re
working on a set with 250 cards, you can be so close to it you don’t even
realize what’s happening. And we would go through and we’d finalize all the
names, and submit it to editing, and then the editor would come back and say, “You
know you have four names that start with the word ‘doom?” And we’re like, “Really?
What?” So we’d have to set about changing probably three of them to something else.
MARK: Yeah, also the editors will also catch—I mean,
although this problem has happened in other languages, in English so far we’ve
never actually repeated a name. And the editors often will catch it. Because one
of the passes they do is they go, “Have we ever used this name?” And then
sometimes there’s some obscure card from way back when that like… oh, here’s a
funny example. I had a card in Unhinged,
and the art was a guy was being erased by a giant eraser. And so I was going to
call it Erase. And then somebody pointed out to me that there was a
card called Erase in Urza’s Legacy,
so I changed the name to Erase (Not the One from Urza’s Legacy). But I was
doing Unhinged, so I was allowed to…
there’s some creative solutions you don’t have available to you in most…
MATT: More tools in the toolbox.
MARK: So here’s another thing. So I was in charge of names
for Odyssey. And right before Odyssey, I sort of got put in charge of
names right… what was the set before Odyssey?
It would have been the end of…
MATT: Masques?
MARK: No no no, before Odyssey
was Invasion, so it would have been Planechase?
MATT: Yeah.
MARK: It would have been Apocalypse.
So I was in… Apocalypse was about to
go to films, and I needed to do a pass on it because the person who was in
charge of names had just left the company. And so I got sort of tasked with
names and flavor text. And so one of the cards was a card called Spirit Lynx,
L-Y-N-X.
MATT: Yes.
MARK: Except it didn’t have the ability Spirit Link. And I mean, we now call it lifelink, but at the time it was casually known as
Spirit Link because it was based on the Spirit Link card from Legends. And I was like, “We can’t call
a card Spirit Lynx if it doesn’t have Spirit Link!” And so now what happens is,
it was so late in the process…
MATT: So wait, that’s a perfect example of what we were
talking about at the very beginning, which is how our own words end up kicking
us in the gut.
MARK: Oh yeah. Exactly. So what happened was, it was so late
in the thing that the collector numbers had already been assigned to cards, and
so what happened was, I had to change the name, but I had to stay within a tiny
gap.
MATT: Yes.
MARK: So like, I had from like SL to SP or something. And so Spirit Lynx became…
MARK AND MATT: Spectral Lynx!
MARK: Yes. By the way, that happens all the time.
MATT: All the time.
MARK: You have to change names. And you have to stay within
the collector number.
MATT: Yes.
MARK: It’s become almost a rite of passage for like trying
to solve… do you remember any for you that you had to solve a name?
MATT: It happened so many times that it didn’t even stick
out as like a thing. But a card might get changed late in development. But that
card’s slot was already like baked into the set.
MARK: Yeah.
MATT: It might have changed from a creature to a sorcery and
therefore couldn’t be called Something… Dude. But it had to start with S.
MARK: Yes. Oh, here’s another thing we have to be careful
of, is.. we talked a little about this earlier, but let me clarify, is you want
to make sure that your name conveys to the person playing it, or especially the
opponent, what kind of card it is. One of my example of I think a set that
might have been our greatest error in names and flavor text was Champions of Kamigawa.
MATT: Yeah.
MARK: Because one of the things was, they were trying so
hard to get this sort of affectation of a Japanese flavor that they ended up
making names that you had no idea what the cards were.
MATT: They were so lyrical they all sort of blended
together.
MARK: Right. It’s kind of like “That Which Stutters,” and
you’re like, “Is that a sorcery? Is that a creature? Is that an enchantment?”
You had no idea.
MATT: It was a land, by the way.
MARK: The one I remember that’s my pet peeve was Counsel of
the Soratami. Which, if you read the word, the word “Council” as in a
body of people and “Counsel” as in advice are spelled differently, but the
problem is, names are said. And so when I say I do something, that you just
hear it. And so Council of the Soratami sounds like a bunch of guys from this…
a bunch of the Soratami got together, and I dislike the name because it just
didn’t sound like a sorcery. Actually, was it instant or sorcery? It was a
card-drawer. I think it was a sorcery. Draw two cards? [NLH—Yes.]
MATT: Yeah.
MARK: Anyway. It’s Divination, right?
MATT: Yes.
MARK: Which, Divination, better name.
MATT: Yes.
MARK: Although even Divination, by the way, is a noun, I
mean, the thing that you learn, by the way, is that people, if they say something
enough, it will eventually just sound okay to them. But we do want to make sure
that as much as possible, the names can help you in making it sound good. Oh,
here’s another thing to talk about. Sometimes another thing you have to be
careful about is sometimes names, if you’re not careful, sound… wrong. If you…
MATT: Oh God, there’s so many (???) I don’t even think we should even mention here.
MARK: Well I mean, how about this? I will mention a name
that went awry, and not explain how it got used. I will leave that for my
audience.
MATT: Okay.
MARK: But a classic example is Stroke of Genius.
MATT: Okay.
MARK: Where when you verb it, it just sounded wrong.
MATT: They get way worse than that.
MARK: Yes.
MATT: In fact, there have been some card names that have
made it as far as when we reviewed the…
MARK: The slideshow?
MATT: The slideshow.
MARK: Yeah.
MATT: That have been… again, you can get so close to your
own word that you can lose perspective. And the writer lost perspective, the
person in charge of names and flavor text lost perspective, and even the
editors lost it. Because a card name came out that if you look at the words, it
meant one thing, but if you actually read the words…
MARK: Right, it sounded different.
MATT: It meant… a sort of violence against a particular
subset of our culture. I’ll just leave it at that. It was horrible.
MARK: Right. But the problem is, you’re in the context of what
it actually means.
MATT: Right.
MARK: And sometimes it’s hard to hear the other context.
MATT: Yeah. When you look at it on a card, you see (???).
MARK: And you get… you think… it’s very common in writing
you have this problem, where you know what you mean, so you always interpret
the meaning you meant. And you just forget there’s a completely different
meaning.
MATT: Right.
MARK: I made that… one of the things that’s funny about
names is that—I remember when I was putting together Odyssey, I had to name the five atogs. And so what we did was, all
of them were some Latin root, with “-atog.”
And I knew that one of them had the best chance of being the really good one.
So at the last minute I changed it. And originally Psychatog had one of the
other names. [NLH—Phantatog]
And I go, “Ohh, I like Psychatog.” So I swapped them. So that Psychatog would
be on the one. Which I’m happy, because like that ended up becoming this major,
major card. And like Psychatog’s a much, much better name than… I forget what
the other ones were, but they weren’t as good as Psychatog.
MATT: Atogatog?
MARK: Oh, Atogatog’s awesome. What else can you call an atog
that eats atogs? So here’s another thing that happens a lot, by the way, which is,
so the way it works is, the person who’s in charge of names and flavor text,
that is their job. I mean, they can be overruled, as anybody can be overruled
by the bosses and stuff, but pretty much your job is you’re the final say on
this is what it is. And people will not like certain names. And they will come
to you, and they will be very, very vocal about how they hate this name. And
part of is sort of balancing what you think’s right.
MATT: Oh, here’s an example of the opposite of that. This
was, it’s either Guildpact or Ravnica: City of Guilds. Where a random
late development card comes in, just like a meaningless hole-filler for a large
black creature. And we had to just shotgun a name onto this thing. Just to kind
of shuttle it through the process. And then creative team member Brady
Dommermuth had a moment of what I consider to be lowbrow genius when he came up
with Helldozer. And I was like, “That is awesome!” And I poked that thing in
and finalized it immediately. And it was less than a couple hours later when
the development guys on the other side of the wall had seen what came to them,
and they’re like, “That is so awesome! We are making this better than it was
supposed to be originally.”
MARK: I wrote the flavor text for Helldozer!
MATT: Yes, you did.
MARK: That was me goofing off. Anyway. Flavor text, that’s a
different topic. We did that last time. So other things I named… I’m trying to
think of other fun naming stories. I know… a lot of times what will happen is,
you’ll name something, and then art comes in. And then the art, like just
contradicts what the name was going to be.
MATT: Here’s a name phenomenon that happens a lot.
MARK: Yeah.
MATT: One thing that many names have to be able to do is to
be able to cycle. Atog is a perfect example. And anything times five is going
to be difficult. You have to come up with some root or link between those five
that is really flexible. And I’ve noticed that in almost every case, three of
them are good.
MARK: Right.
MATT: Four of them are solid. And one just stinks.
MARK: Yeah.
MATT: And it makes you… like, cringe and get twisted in
frustration thinking, “There’s got to be a way to finish out this cycle without
sucking!” But… ehh, it just, nine times out of ten, there’s going to be a
stinker in the group.
MARK: So here’s a story I came up with of how I had a name I
really loved, and then the art came in. We used it later obviously. But so this
was in Odyssey. I forget the card.
But one of my writers had come up with the name Faceless Butcher. And I thought
that was the most awesome name. And then we get the art back, and he has a
face! I’m like, “Nooo!” And then… so what happened was, next time, I saved it
for… what came after?
MATT: Torment.
MARK: Torment. (???) And the note in the art
description is…
MATT: No face.
MARK: Faceless Butcher does not have a face! Just so we
could get the name Faceless Butcher in. But it’s funny, like, one of the things
about the names is, they serve so many masters. And that like, right, it has to
fit, and it has to make sense in context of the rules text. And it has to sound
right. And people have to be able to pronounce it. And they have to know what it
means, although…
MATT: So we have a… in our last conversation about flavor
text, we had talked about in many ways, flavor text was a veneer.
MARK: Sure.
MATT: A lacquer that you could apply to the card to unify it
all.
MARK: Yeah.
MATT: But in a lot of cases, card names do that same thing.
Where you can take some wonky piece of art, that somehow in the process ended
up looking not anything like what the mechanic relates to at all.
MARK: Right.
MATT: And all you have to help out is some crazy turn of
phrase or nuanced group of words to pull those things together. And that
happens a lot.
MARK: Yeah. Right. A lot of times, right. The component—like,
sometimes you get the art in, and you have the mechanic, and the art and the
mechanic aren’t perfect fits. They’re kind of like… right, and it’s up to the
name to save it all.
MATT: This card destroys enchantments, and the art is a
woman asleep on a hill. What? What is… what do you do with that? I’m pretty
sure that’s a real example. [NLH—Let me
know if you know this one.]
MARK: Yeah, there’s one, actually in my Odyssey podcast I talked about it, where we had swapped out the
art. Back in the day we used to swap art around, we don’t do that much anymore,
our art direction’s gotten way, way better. But back in the day we had a lot of
pieces, and like we would move them where they needed to go. And then we would
end up like with some random effect and some random, somewhat neutral-looking
card, and then we somehow had to make it make sense. And… what was that card? Something
about fire. Ceasing Fire?
MATT: Cease-Fire?
MARK: Cease-Fire. Right. The card we had left was a Fog-ish
effect in white, and a picture of these guys sitting around like a fire with
all this smoke with faces in the thing. And I knew that the card was a card
that wouldn’t be played a lot, and it was like a very neutral piece of art, so
I’m like, “Okay, I’ll figure this out,” and then like I came up with Cease-Fire.
MATT: That’s good.
MARK: Because it stops the attack and there was fire.
Sometimes that’s all you need, by the way, the name has to make sense with
each. Like Cease-Fire makes sense because there’s a fire, and Cease-Fire makes
sense because it stops damage, but hey. It connected both. Good enough. And everyone’s
happy.
MATT: The translators hated you.
MARK: I’m sure they did.
MATT: There’s no way to do that in their language.
MARK: So that’s the other thing, we solved the problems in
English, and then right. Some poor translator has to solve the problem in their
own language. I do know that the—it’s very, very hard. Translating Magic cards is very hard. Because you’re
not just directly translating. You have to solve the problem for your local language.
So I do know that it’s—I’ve had a chance to talk with translators, and it’s
interesting, because the problems that they have, some of—when you do names and
flavor text, here’s a whole other issue, which is problems with translation.
And there’s certain things that they have issues with. And one of it is, certain
languages just can’t talk about certain things really well. And so they respect
the fact that we are sometimes doing specialized words, but I know in other
languages that they have to be more blunt sometimes. Like, English will have
the perfect word for this concept, and then another language they’re like, “Yeah,
we don’t have that word.” Oh, here’s another problem. All German names increase
the card line by, what, 20%? Like, German is just about 20% longer. And so we
have to be careful. I mean, sometimes we squeeze it in, but you always have to
kind of be conscious of other languages, especially German, are longer. And
then the reverse problem, we have the reverse thing in Japanese and Chinese,
they tend to be shorter because they’re using characters rather than… but
anyway, we’re close to work. Any other things you think of that are, like,
pitfalls of naming things that you would not have thought had you not done it?
What sets did you name, by the way? I was going to ask you this earlier.
MATT: The first Ravnica
block, the Time Spiral block, and Coldsnap. There was that two-year
period. Whatever was in there. And I did some of the late, late writing in
whatever with the final set of the Kamigawa block.
MARK: Saviors of Kamigawa.
MATT: Yeah. But after that…
MARK: Actually, you joined basically when I became Head Designer.
MATT: Yes.
MARK: Right. You were my first hire when I got the job. Because
when I became Head Designer I also ran the creative team for a while, and one
of the very first things I did, I had to fill a position, which you did an
awesome test.
MATT: You made a fine choice.
MARK: Yes.
MATT: But I had worked on names and flavor text as a writer.
MARK: Right, you’d written…
MATT: Up until I came back to work here, three years ago.
MARK: Yep. And then we sucked up all your time.
MATT: Yeah. Not a lot of time to do the writing these days.
MARK: I’m sure. No painting, no writing.
MATT: I know. (???) One
thing that is pretty interesting regarding card names is that a project that I’m
working on right now, can’t really elaborate on for the folks, but that
requires me to find art that represents each of our major worlds and each of
our major characters, like a suite of art for each of those people and places.
Enough to tell the tale. To summarize what that person or place is all about.
And I can go through and find all kinds of awesome pieces of art, but so many
of them have to get kicked to the curb because without the context of words, what
the hell is going on?
MARK: Yeah.
MATT: It’s like, the context of the card allows the art to
play. To be like either a visual evolution of a concept as opposed to being
that very thing.
MARK: Yes.
MATT: And I now have a greater appreciation for what the
names do. There would be spells that summarize a wolf’s predatory instinct or
whatever, but when you take away the name, it’s a wolf.
MARK: Yeah.
MATT: What do you do with that? You toss it in the circular
file, I guess.
MARK: I mean, the thing that… I’ve said this multiple times,
is just the power of words. Words are so powerful. And that the reason that—like,
we will take on a single card, I mean, you could spend days and days and days
trying to get the right name for a card.
MATT: I did. That happens.
MARK: Right. And it—the key of it is just, like the right
word in the right context will just mean so much, and if you’re just off by a
hair, it just isn’t quite as right. Anyway, we are now here at work.
MATT: I’m late for a meeting!
MARK: Okay, Matt’s late for a meeting, so I want to say
thanks for joining us today guys, and I’ve gotta [go be] making Magic. I’ll talk to you next week.
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