Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1133: Naming Sets with Ari Zirulnik

Episode Date: May 3, 2024

In this podcast, I sit down with Ari Zirulnik to talk about how we name Magic sets.

I'm not pulling on the driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work at home edition. So today is a topic that people have asked me to do for a while which is all about names. How do we name sets? So I decided to get a special guest, Ari Zerunnik. So Ari is here. He actually names sets. So we got we have a pro here. Hey Ari. Hey Mark, I'm here. I facilitate the naming process for Modern Magic the Gathering sets. It's a group, there's a lot of people involved.

No one person picks a name. You're in charge of coming up with names that people like and then the group picks one of those names usually, right? Yeah, we'll go through the process. It's pretty fun. Before we get there, I'm going to start a little history. I like to think of this podcast as being a Magic history podcast.

OK, so let's go back to the early days of Magic. How did Zeds get named when Magic first started? In fact, the interesting thing, let's talk about the game itself. There's actually a funny story here. So when Richard made Magic the Gathering, he called it Magic. That was his name for it. And then like when they went to name like officially name the game, I don't know, legal or whatever, whatever, somebody said, well, you can't just name Magic.

That just there's no way we can copyright the word Magic. So they came up with other names for it. In fact, when they first announced the game of Magic, it was announced as the name Manaclash. That's what was announced as. But eventually Richardash. That's what it was announced as. But eventually Richard goes, that's so dumb, it's just Magic, why can't we call it Magic? And so they said, well, okay, if you wanna call it Magic, it needs to be more than just Magic, right? Magic's too, it's a common word.

So they added the Gathering, that's why it's Magic the Gathering. And Richard's, I think, original idea was, when the first expansion came out, which would be two years in or something, the game would then become Magic Ice Age or something, and that the last part of the name would keep changing. That was Richard's original idea. Anyway, Magic the Gathering stuck, obviously, and we didn't keep changing the name.

And then in the early days, what would happen is they would give it a code name, and the code name they would give it would be an honest guess of what they maybe it could be called. So for example, Ice Age, the code name was Ice Age. So when it came out, they called it Ice Age. Okay, but then came the set that changed it all. There was a set called The Dark. And the problem with using a code name or any word in general is if you use it long enough it just sounds okay. You just get used to it.

And so they put out this app and called it the dark because that was their code name and they go, oh, why not? It sounds good to me. And then they learned that is a bad idea. So we started making code names that we can't use as real names so we don't get used to them. That's why sets now have sports names or city names so we don't get used to them because we know in the world,

we're not putting out swimming. So we know that that's, or what's the upcoming set? Rugby, we're gonna talk about Bloomberg of naming a little bit later today. Rugby was his code name. Okay, so we realized that we needed to do names and early magic was mostly about,

can we get a name that we're allowed to use? A lot of, we liked one word names in the early days of magic. And I remember one of the things that was really funny is we originally, Urza's saga was supposed to be called Urza's Odyssey. And then we were told by legal or somebody that we just couldn't use Odyssey. And then like a few years later we use,

we call this that Odyssey. I'm like, how is this possible? How is adding Errs to it make it harder to do? So anyway, but anyway, over the years, we've got more and more like sort of rules to naming. We're gonna talk about the rules to naming. And as magic had more functionality, for example, once it became a digital thing,

once we had to be not only the tabletop version, but the digital version, that added all sorts of other rules to it. Just because, so people are aware, when you name something, you have to look at the marketplace. You can't have what's called marketplace confusion, where you make something

and people might think your product is somebody else's product. And so there's a lot, there's many, many different things we care about the name, but one is legal has to give the okay that it's not going to cause market confusion. Anyway, Ari, I've not talked for several minutes. You're just here to watch me talk, Ari. Okay, so let's get a little bit into, let's talk in big picture. What does a name need to do? All right. So what a name needs to do, a name needs to deliver on whatever the conceptual promise of the set is. Like you have some

key, what is the set about? The name needs to convey what the set is about. And also who the name is for. The name isn't really for the people listening to this podcast. We can keep the code. We can keep the code name for you guys. And you would be like, oh, rugby, the animal set. Magic players are really smart and are really good at doing research on the game and fully understanding what's going on.

So we really wanna hit the players on the edge and the completely unenfranchised players. You may not know anything about the game and kind of tell them what the set is gonna promise. about the game and kind of tell them what the set is going to promise. Okay, so one of the things we talked about before we started this was that there are two very different things to name. One is brand new world, you've never been here before, and the other is you're going back to a world that the audience already knows because we're revisiting. Which one would you like to start with? Let's start with a new world. They both start at the

exact same place is that I have handed from above. From above. Yeah, from the stakeholders, they tell me basically what they want the name to convey, what that important information. So let's start with Bloomberg. We're talking about Bloomberg. You want to set that first of all, it's animals that information needs to be there. And really want to get this idyllic pastoral fantasy vibe across as well. Like it's not like, like there's lots of awesome conflict in the set, but it's not like a really violent set. It's, it's, it's a little more chill and fun. So we want to make sure it has those vibes. So yeah, I've

handed those things from above and then I, I, I come up with some buckets, like, which basically trying to figure out where we want to generate a bunch of words that are relevant to those things. So, you know, putting it simple, I say, okay, we need a bucket for animal words, we need a bucket for pastoral words. Okay, right. And there's it's five to 10 buckets per set. So that I get together my group of brilliant creatives. And we spend we spend a couple hours just writing down words that go into those buckets. So you just like

generating anywhere you can think of when you're naming a new plane, like Bloomberg, I personally really like to dig into other languages as well. So I'm on Google Translate, shout out to Welsh, one of my favorite languages for naming stuff. And we just generate a massive list of words in each of our buckets. So then the next phase of that meeting is we take those words and we start mashing them together into potential set names. So we end up with a big, big list of buckets of words and then a big list of set names.

And then I go off, I usually talk with my, my former boss, Matt Danner, and the two of us will dig through that big list of names and we'll identify five that we feel pretty good about, that we think deliver on the set's promise or the plane's promises, maybe, in this case. And then we move on to testing. Before we go to testing, a quick question about this section. Is it a rule?

Do we have to name the plane if it's a brand new plane? Must the name of the new plane be in the name? It's not a rule, but we want to create brand recognition for the plane name. So it's highly likely but I saw you have like Strixhaven, which was the name of the school and not the name of the plane name. So it's highly likely. But I assume you have like Strixhaven, which was the name of the school and not the name of the plane. That was my example. But I actually.

Yeah, so it's not ironclad, but statistically likely to be the name of the plane to also be in the set name. So for Bloomberg, we actually did two steps. We tested the name of the plane. We sent out some, I'll share some of the rejected Bloomberg names. Okay, let's hear some rejected names.

So we had, well, my personal favorite that sounds really great out loud and looks completely terrible written down was Eidlwald, which I thought was very nice sounding, but that double L totally kills it. We had Breyerbend, Hazelhenge, Wilderwald, and Bloomberg were the five that we went for testing with. And Bloomberg stomped. We had a big winner there in the testing.

We're not beholden to the testing. If we on the creative team feel really strongly that a name is like really working and it gets like second place or whatever, we can go forward with that. But it's pretty often the testing lines up with our thoughts as well. So once we got-

Okay, all right. Yeah. What if you haven't done some testing on names? Have you learned some general principles of what the audience seems to like? names, have you learned some general principles of what the audience seems to like? Um, it's, it's pretty tough, because those sets are so different. Okay, right. I think in general, people prefer

shorter names, longer ones, I think that that has become pretty clear, like, spoiler alert, Bloomberg one, it wasn't Bloomberg, colon, anything, Bloomberg. Um, and in terms of I'm not sure if you can hear me. I'm not sure if you can hear me. I'm not sure if you can hear me. I'm not sure if you can hear me. I'm not sure if you can hear me. I'm not sure if you can hear me. I'm not sure if you can hear me. I'm not sure if you can hear me. I'm not sure if you can hear me. I'm not sure if you can hear me.

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I'm not sure if you can hear me. I'm not sure if you can hear me. I'm not sure if you can hear me. I'm not sure if you can hear me. I'm not sure if you can hear me. I'm not sure if you can hear me. I'm not sure if you can hear me. I'm not sure if you can hear me. I'm not sure if you can hear me. I'm not sure if you can hear me. I'm not sure if you can hear me. the more non-aggress stuff in the non-male vids, but you know, it's kind of subjective. The biggest thing is the length. Otherwise, you know, we have like, okay, we're doing Wild West,

and we're doing Murder Mystery, and we're doing Animal World, and we're doing Haunted House. What do those things have in common? I couldn't tell you. Yeah, so the other thing is, so for example, do people tend to like alliteration? Do they I mean other other other certain qualities they just very very spending on what you're trying to do In general alliteration isn't something that we want in our set names Okay, cuz it so magic the gathering is a fighting game, right? about beating your friends up and Alliteration is just a little too whimsical for what we're going for most of the time.

Okay, Bloomberg was a lot of whimsical. That's why Bloomberg got away with it. Yeah, that's part of the reason it works so well for Bloomberg, right? It's that it is, it's pastoral. Alliteration is pastoral. You heard it here first. Tell your friends.

Okay, so. Yeah. Next step. All Okay, so. Yeah. Next step. All right, so next step for Bloomberg, we went and we tested, we did another meeting, we came up with a bunch of colon names for Bloomberg, and let me, I've displaced the document.

Ha ha ha ha. Oh, so while you're looking for the document, let me explain to the audience real quick. We print in many languages. So not only while you're looking for the document, let me explain to the audience real quick. We print in many languages. So not only do we have to find the right name, but we also have to look at what the name is in other languages. And we're talking mostly today we're talking the English the English version of the name, but just be aware, there's a whole

international like having a name also means that it, it needs to be make sense in other languages. So just as a yeah, our local team, our local team is so talented. They do they. And there was just a quick aside when we were working on a I was working on a. Commander deck names with our copywriter, Austin Bridges, and we were like, we don't want to give them puns because that's so hard to localize. So it's kind of reached out to to the team, the localization team, like, hey, are you are you all okay with this? And they like demanded us that we give them more puns because

they have so much fun localizing them. My favorite one is that the Velociraptor deck in LCI. Yeah, in Spanish, it's a Acceleraptor. They're really good. Yeah. Anyway, so we do more naming generation. We talked about what's Bloomberg about. Well, I can't actually tell you what Bloomberg is. But needless to say, just Bloomberg crushed again. Sadly, Bloomberg colon, tales of adventureuring tales spelled like anvil tails did not

very well There we go. Then we have bloomboro. Yeah, the reason just real quickly the reason we do sometimes use the descriptor like in the name is Sometimes there's a word that the name doesn't like original Ravnica, for example, there was great concern that the idea of the guilds wouldn't come through. Or in Ikoria, they really want to hammer home monsters. There's big giant monsters. It's a layer of the Behemoth. So it really depends on whether the name in a vacuum can sort of convey it. And the goal is to have it like, we don't like,

I mean, we don't like I mean we don't do descriptors if we could avoid descriptors we avoid them most of the time right oh yeah I mean it totally depends like Kamigawa has always had a descriptor so there was a universe where we returned to could have just been Kamigawa but yeah you know we really want to say hey we're modern now yeah yeah yeah dynasty that's one of my favorites ones that we've done recently. Yeah, so you want to talk about Return to's. Okay, so we're going to go back. So, how are

Return to's different? Return to's are different because well, you can't have a name that's just the name of the plane. We're not spending time generating a new plane name. And it's really important to talk about what is important on the plane this time that wasn't there before. So we can take a look at Ixalan, right? So LCI, obviously it's a return to Ixalan,

but it's completely different. We're underground. It's less kindred focused than the original one, but you know, it's still present. I guess the biggest thing is we're underground. So it's fairly simple. We we get together in the group again, we jam a bunch of underground words, a bunch of discovery words. And the other thing, sorry, I'm a little backed up here. Yeah, the other thing, sorry, I'm a little bit back up here. Yeah, the other thing that's really important about return to us like that is that we can kind of

get a name that's more conceptual, like Lost Caverns of Ixalan really carries across this adventure movie vibe. Yeah, right. That wasn't there in like rivals of Ixalan because we really want to like hit this. there's been a few of these like Um, oh God, what's the word? We have like murders of Karloff Banner, which is very murder mystery Outlaws of Thunder Junction, which is very Western feeling like they're very genre names. Yeah Fun fact about OTJ we we tossed around for a moment calling it

the 13 outlaws of Thunder Junction because that just felt like super old school Western to us. And then the packaging team threatened to have me killed. So there we go. The good, the bad and the first draft. Exactly. The first picks, the last picks. Yeah.

Fistful of draft picks. Oh, by the way, the name of the people I get asked all the time Thunder Junction is the name of the plane That's correct That's why they're outlaws of so what another philosophy change real quick for the audience is that I think early in magic We were we wanted like we loved one word names early on we wanted to like, we loved one word names early on. And I think we've more embraced a little bit more that if we need a few extra words to really explain the tone and mood, that's okay. And so our names, we don't do a lot of one word.

I mean, Bloomberg was a one word name, but we don't do a lot of one word names these days, a few, but not a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We have Bloomberg and Duskborne, which are very evocative in their names. But Duskborne adds that descriptor. That's true, it's a house of horror. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm not going to. They are cool. I will give you, they are very cool names. I like the names. I want to tease the listeners that they are among the coolest names in the history of

magic. They are very cool names. So 2025 has some cool names coming. So yeah, get ready. Okay. So, okay. So let's say you guys do your internal testing. You find a name that you think works.

Let's talk a little bit about like, how many different groups look at this and give feedback on names? Internally, thankfully, it's not a ton of people like this. I will, I'll do my name generator, my top five generation with Danner. And then that kind of goes to the Magic Creative Director, that'll go to Aaron over in R&D. And that's really it in terms of people approving up there. So it's after, I mean, there's been like 10 to 15 people working on it up until that point with all the groups. But thankfully the approvals, you don't have to go through too many,

oh, and legal, of course. Oh yeah, so the other thing that's interesting is we'll come up with a name Legal like that's kind of the final like it's a can use name. Does it cause a problem? Um, I'm trying to think have you been involved with legal like this has happened in the past where legal lesson is no You cannot do that name and we have to like find a new name I actually come from the but have you had it happen? Thankfully I haven't. They've been pretty accommodating.

Like sometimes they'll say like, hey, you really need to make sure to throw a trademark here or a registered mark there. Okay, I'll tell a story. I'll tell a story of what happened for the audience. Okay, so we were making the set you all know as cons of Tarkir. We had a name, which was not cons of Tarkir. We settled on it, it went through all the process. Everybody said it sounds great. They mocked up like logos and the last minute,

legal goes, no, you cannot use this name. And the thing because the boy was a block at the time, like we needed the first name and the last name to be parallel, like it was more and we had a scramble the last minute and change the name. And so like, concept or care happen about as late as I've ever seen a name change happen. So that does happen occasionally that concept or care is a while ago. So yeah, before my time at Wizards, but I'm glad I wasn't part of that.

The first set that I worked on was Dungeons and Dragons Adventures in the Forgotten Realms. Yeah, that's, that's colon colon. That's it, Magic the Gathering, Dungeons and Dragons. So it's a lot of. Yeah, it. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it.

That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it.

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That's it. That's it. That's it. That's Yep. Okay, so. The olden days of 2020. So I wanna go back. We're gonna start with Thunder's Outlaw Junction. We're gonna go backwards. And I want like, just a little snippet on your favorite thing about the name. Sure. Okay, so what's your favorite thing

about Outlaw's at Thunder Junction as a name? Sounds like it could be a real Western. Okay, Murder's the Karloff Manor. Sounds like it could be a real Western. Okay, Murder of the Karloff Manor. Sounds like it could be a real murder mystery. Those are two very, like as genre as we get as a company. So the names hit the genre. Okay, I'll give you those too, but not new comments. Okay, Lost Caverns of Ixalan. Actually, wait, wait.

I can't say it sounds like an adventure movie. Sorry. No, no, I'm saying I'm saying I want to throw some comments into it. So what do you, what's your favorite thing. No, no, I'm saying I'm going to throw some comments into it. So what's your favorite thing about Lost Caverns of Ixalan? I think it really conveys a sense of adventure. It was Caverns of Ixalan in the process for a while. And then adding the word lost really just

amped up the feeling of discovery, which I really like. Yeah, I was just going to say that. I think the word lost carries just so much work that's really like. Yeah, I was just gonna say that. I think the word loss carries, like, does so much work that's really important. Okay, Wilds of Eldraine. I think there's this feeling of discovery again, right? Like, you know you have the whimsical fairy tale Eldraine, and then the Wilds gives you this kind of like dark unknown that the set promises that you get a little peek into.

But here's a little behind the scenes story. I think we called it Wilds of Eldraine as like an early like, we'll give things a name very early on, it's just like a, like not a real name, it's kind of like trying to sound like a real name, just to sort of present. And Wilds of Eldraine was one of the earliest names, like we, like it was our like test not real,

but we're using the name. And that name never makes it to the final product. So I was kind of amazed when Wild Eldraine actually made it all the way to the final product. Yeah, it was really evocative in step. Okay, March of the Machine. All right, March of the Machine. It definitely feels like a big conclusion to an arc.

It's like very episode six. So the story of March of the Machine is there was a big debate, should it be March of the Machine or March of the Machines? Because obviously there's a magic card called March of the Machines. And there were some some people that wanted to call March of the Machines. But I think the story people were like, they're a singular force. They're not many. It's a machine. It's not many little machines and so

Yeah, it's okay. It refers directly to the combined forces of fire exia, which went by the machine Legion Yeah, which was a singular. Yeah another that was definitely I was thankfully Kind of done with it by the the s or no s I got to watch that from the sidelines Okay Frexio all will be one. That one was one that we named really quickly. Like that was one of the, that one was kind of a slam dunk. Like we still go through the whole process,

but it was never gonna be anything else. I mean, that's the, sorry. Cause we never named Phyrexia before. Like we had new Phyrexia, but we hadn't used Phyrexia by itself. And then, right, we wanted a tagline, but like this is so obvious what the tagline is. So yeah, I'll take a gimme. Hey, it's nice. Okay, um, the Brothers War, like did that ever... did you guys ever consider anything but the Brothers War? I don't even think that one went through testing. Yeah, that was just-

I think that one was just like- That's called Brothers War. That's what it is. Dominaria United. Yeah, no, I mean, I think that it was about everyone coming. It's a little bit of an ironic name, right? Cause it's everyone coming together while Firexion is trying to tear it apart.

Yeah. But like the end state of the set, Ajani aside, is that the people of Dominaria have come together to face the Phyrexia Menace. And that's a good example. So Dominaria United is a good example. We're like, hey, the first time we in the modern era, the first time we went to Dominaria, we named it Dominaria. But then when you go back, you're like, why? It can't just be Dominaria again, but we want Dominaria in the name. And so the thing that's interesting is when you use an adjective and when you have verbs and it's always fun sort of how you position it.

Yeah, it's like the goals. It's about the new coalition, right? Like the coalition classic back in invasion when I first started playing magic around then right? I hold that very dearly so getting this idea of a new coalition I think Dominaria the new coalition was on the list at some point. Okay streets of Nuka Pena. I That's another genre name right like that feels very I believe we had some parallel evolution with horse very I believe we had some parallel evolution with harsh on that one. But just really hitting that that kind of down

and dirty noir vibes. Did that was new Coppina? Was that my memory of new companions? We went through a bunch of different names for that that place. Um, there was it did have a different name originally. Yeah. And then there was something happened that made us have a different name for it. Okay, okay.

Yeah, we can't even talk about it here. We'll move on. Okay. Before that is, oh, Kamigawa and Nian Dynasty. We hadn't used Kamigawa just as a name. So obviously we're excited by Kamigawa, but I think when we do returns, we also were more likely to descriptors of returns, because sometimes people can then

use that as a name if they want to use it as the name. Yeah, I think neon dynasty does a great job of like encapsulating what the updated kind of guy is still like, like dynasty is it because the sets about the conflict between modernity and tradition, right? Yeah, and neon very modern dynasty very traditional So it was really nice getting that in the name of the set. Yeah, that's super cool. Okay, then we get to We'll talk about these together in this rod midnight hunt in indus rod crimson bow. Oh Yeah, that's the second those uh, I think we're pretty straightforward vampire wedding internal like werewolves,

right down the middle. I mean, I think the idea was, did it always want to be Innistrad? Did you ever consider not Innistrad colon? Like, was it ever like new moon of Innistrad or something? We test both. We always try to generate both. We don't say like it's gonna be a colon

or it's gonna not be a colon. We try to generate in both directions. Unless you'd be like, oh, we've had like five colons recently, then we'll make sure there's no colons. And I assume between them, you wanted them the same, like because they were sort of paired together,

like it wasn't one gonna have a colon, one not have a colon. Like you wanted to do them parallel. Yeah, no, you want them to parallel, yeah. Yeah. Okay, before that is Strixhaven. The set without the play name, that's's we don't do that very often. Well, you've missed the best set. Oh, what's that? What's that? Did I miss a certain infinity? Oh, infinity. Let's talk about the naming

of infinity. I did. I did. I was going through the premier sets. Um, you were there for that one. We were just that was back in the before times. Yeah, that was the before times. Just bunch of us jammed in a word, jammed in an office writing a bunch of words on a whiteboard. The one that I wanted so badly but for external reasons we weren't allowed to do was unfair. I wanted that one so badly. I wanted Unfinity really badly. I know, was that yours? Yeah. I really like that it opened up the door to new kinds of un-names. Right? Like, we're not switching to actual words. Actual words don't restrict us.

Yeah, no. Listen, it has infinite amounts of fun. Infinite amounts. Okay, let's talk Strict Saving. So, was it controversial to not have the name of the world? Like, Archivios is the name of the world. It's the one planet a was it controversial to not have the name of the world? Like Arcadius is the name of the world. It's the one plane a lot of people don't know the name of. We've now hit before me running the process, but I was in the naming room for Strixhaven

and it was always gonna be the name of the school. Yeah, it makes sense. I mean, it is so focused on the name of the school. Okay. Yeah. The one before it, which is there, no. Okay, the one before it, which is, no, no, the one before that is, oh, it's call time. Were you in the room for call time? No, that was actually named before I started. Oh, was it?

If you can believe such a thing, yeah. Yeah, the one here, the one story I'll tell, it goes a few back, was for a while, Pharaoh's Beyond Death wasaraohs colon beyond death. And I convinced them to take the colon out. That's my great attribution is I got the colon out of the name. So.

No, it sounds good to have the colon. That's one of those sets that we couldn't directly near the name and the three letter code. Yes, yes. Because it would confuse a lot of people. It was TBD. Yeah, we talked about could TBD be the three letter code? Like that would have caused endless confusion.

So we didn't do that. Okay, what is, okay, we don't have too much time left. What is pre you working on names? What is your favorite magic name? Like what name do you think was the, from before your time, that was an awesome magic name? Oh, I mean, I feel like I'm so biased and just have to go to my favorite set when I was a kid, right? Okay, what's your favorite set?

First, my pack one pick one magic name is Apocalypse. Apocalypse, that is a, Apocalypse is a strong name. It's completely unownable and we could not name it these days, but it's so cool Man, let's just do a podcast where I talk about how much I like apocalypse. I could fill half an hour It's a third thirty minute. I already talked about the name apocalypse. It is a good set up on everything about it You kidding me spirit? Yeah apocalypse Are you kidding me? Spirit Monger? Yeah, I thought, hey, Apocalypse,

there's not a lot of third sets in the block era that like worked, and that was one of the ones that really was way more successful than most third blocks. Oh, it was the first box I ever bought, so you're welcome. Okay, well, you're welcome. Thanks. Anyway, so I wanna thank you for, I'm at my desk now here,

so I wanna thank you for being with us today and talking through names. And the one thing that I love to do is have podcasts on like, go super deep on a very narrow topic. Just because I want the audience to realize, how many hours do you guys spend on a single name you think? Lots.

I mean, just give the audience like 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 100. But what do you think? Lots. I mean, just give me the audio. 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 100. But what do you think? I'd say it's about 20 hours. About 20 hours. To get the name there, yeah. And that doesn't include just downtime where testing is occurring, right? Like the combined tens of hours

from our wonderful survey takers, right? It's a lot of work. A lot of people touch on the names. So kudos to everybody. Yeah, I just said, like I love showing like, here's the thing you don't think twice about and actual people spend a lot of time to make sure that that's the right thing. And so thank you for all your hard work on your names. And I agree 2025 has some awesome names, which I have heard and I like. So I will give thumbs up now,

but you guys will hear them later. So I wanna thank you, Ari. Thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you so much for having me. Everybody else, I'm at my desk. So we all know that means this is the end of my drive to work. Instead of talking magic,

it's time for me to be making magic. So thanks everybody for being here and I will see you next time. Bye-bye.