Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #406: Answering Questions

Episode Date: February 3, 2017

I spend a lot of time answering questions. In this podcast, I talk about that aspect of my job and explain what I've learned over the years about how to best answer questions. ...

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 I'm pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today's topic is about questions. Answering questions in particular. So one of my jobs, I have many jobs I guess, one of the things I do obviously is I interact with the public. And part of that is answering questions. So I thought today I would use my podcast to talk about sort of how I came about answering questions and what I've learned in the many, many years of answering questions about how to answer questions. Okay, so first a little bit of history. So what happened was, even before I came to Wizards,
Starting point is 00:00:43 I originally, for those who know my history, I started by doing the puzzle column in the Duelist. And I was very intrigued with getting interaction and talking to people. So one of the things that I would do is I would go on the Usenet, the internet of the day, and there were magic, you know, there was a place where people talked magic. And I used to say, hey, I got a puzzle coming out, you know. Oh, what happened was the way the puzzles used to work was I would print the puzzle in one magazine and then I wouldn't print the answer until the next magazine. And in the early days of the dualist, the next magazine could be as much as two months away. So what I would do is I would go online and I'd say to people, hey, it's me, I'm the puzzle guy.
Starting point is 00:01:30 If you think you have the answer, you can email me the answer and I'll let you know whether or not you're right. So that way, you know, that way people who had solved it, if they wanted to, they could figure out whether they were correct or not. I didn't post the answer because I wanted people to figure it out. But I was willing to let people write to me. And one of the things that happened, which, A, I wanted to have a little service so I could help people know if they did it correctly. But another thing was I was always very interested to see how people did the puzzle.
Starting point is 00:02:00 And a lot of the early experimentation with the puzzles was watching how other people solved the puzzles. And sometimes what would happen is they would solve the puzzle quicker than I had solved it, in less steps than I had solved it. And the way the dualist had worked is people would see the puzzle and could respond to the puzzle before I had to turn in my answers to the puzzle. So one of the things that was kind of a nice perk was people would write in to me, I got to tell them whether it worked or not, and if people found better answers than the answer I had made, I would find out about that and I could incorporate it. And a lot of times what I
Starting point is 00:02:36 would do is someone would find a quicker answer, so when I wrote my answer I would write the quickest answer but then say, oh you also do A, B, and C which were slower answers that I knew I had found. And so it was a nice way to sort of, interesting way to check things. But anyway, that's how I started. That's the first time I interacted with the public was sort of getting information on the puzzles. And then a couple people would, from time to time, would ask me things, you know.
Starting point is 00:03:04 I put my email out there for people to write to me, and people sometimes would say, hey, and they'd ask something. And so I started answering people because I thought it would be fun to do. And I remember at the time, when I was making the puzzles in the early, early days, I was working down in Hollywood,
Starting point is 00:03:22 and I was, there's a lot of downtime, you know, that I was, when Magic first came out, I was definitely in the phase where I was doing a lot of speculative writing, trying to get more jobs. And so I had a lot of free time. This is the time where I would, I started working at the Gamekeeper. So I was going a little store crazy, being in the house the whole time. But anyway, I had some extra time. And so I definitely got involved early on. And what I saw was Tom Wiley. So for those who don't know Tom Wiley,
Starting point is 00:03:57 Tom Wiley was the very first rules manager. He actually got his job because he spent a lot of energy figuring out the rules. And then on the Usenetsets he would answer rules questions. So whenever, like people would post rules questions and Tom would find the rules questions and then give them an answer. And he's proved to be so good at it, Wizards took notice and eventually gave him a job of rules manager.
Starting point is 00:04:21 The job didn't exist until Tom came along. Now it's a standard, now it's a role somebody has. But at the time, when Tom first started doing it, there was no rules manager. That didn't exist. But they realized, watching Tom answer questions, that, hey, you really needed somebody that understood the rules really well. And so Tom actually got noticed by posting online answering questions. Meanwhile, I, in the early days, you know, I was kind of the puzzle guy, but I was associated
Starting point is 00:04:51 with Wizards, even though at that point I was a freelancer. But people would ask questions from time to time. And I started, you know, I started answering questions about the duelists and things that I knew answers to. I would answer questions. But then I got hired by Wizards. And all of a sudden, here I was, somebody who was working at Wizards in R&D, and I still had a pretty good link to the internet, you know, to the people,
Starting point is 00:05:18 to the main place people talk magic. And so what I started doing was I started answering questions, you know, a little more, I mean, official might not be the right word in the sense that no one sort of assigned me the task. But I took it upon myself to start answering sort of behind the scenes-ish questions. Because people were aware who I was, and then they knew that I had started working there. And so I started answering more general magic questions. Now, at some point, Catherine Haynes, who was the editor of The Duelist, came to me and she saw the stuff I had been doing on the Usenet. And so she said that she'd wanted to start a column.
Starting point is 00:06:01 And what she wanted the column to be was somebody sort of talking with the players, kind of giving them sneak peeks of things to come. And she and I worked out a comment. It ended up being called Insider Trading. And the idea was that, you know, I was a man on the inside, but really I was one of you and I want to feed you information. And so the idea was, you know, that the audience had already known me. Obviously, I, not only was I doing the puzzles, but at that point, I was writing a lot of columns for the, for the, a lot of, you know, articles for the duel. So like, I was within the duel as a decently well-known person. And so Catherine thought that I would be a good mix to sort of do this behind
Starting point is 00:06:41 the scenes information. And the column became very, very popular. And that's the first place I started doing my little teasers where I would talk about things that were coming about giving you full information. And I did a lot of preview stuff and I would occasionally we do preview cards and, you know, I really started using it to sort of give insight. And that's the first place where I really started explaining behind the scenes why and how we did things. And then eventually what would happen is that would lead to me when I was tasked with making the new website for the, or making the website really,
Starting point is 00:07:21 of creating daily content for the website. I liked the idea of having columns, weekly columns. And one of the columns that I decided that I wanted to do is a design column, which I was going to write, and I continued to write to this day. And that really was me delving even more into the, okay, I'm going to get behind the scenes. Now, what would happen is once I started doing my column, used to get a lot of email and I would answer my email there also were threads, we don't have threads anymore we had our old bulletin boards back in the day
Starting point is 00:07:54 where each column would have a thread with people talking and a lot of times people would ask questions and I would jump in there from time to time and answer questions and then along came Twitter ask questions and I would jump in there from time to time and answer questions. And then along came Twitter and Twitter gave me a lot of very instant access and people would ask questions on Twitter and I would try to answer those questions. Twitter is a little, I mean, be aware of each stage along the way. Like when I was on the Usenet, that was semi, well, first people would write email to me
Starting point is 00:08:26 that was private I mean not that people couldn't share it but that was me writing one to one then I started asking questions on the Usenet that was more group a group thing then I started doing email for the column
Starting point is 00:08:37 that was a little more private one on one although I did start incorporating some emails I got into some of the stuff I wrote same when I did the column in fact one of my earliest columns into some of the stuff I wrote. Same when I did the column. In fact, one of my earliest columns, in fact, the column that I wrote that really started defining how I wrote behind the scenes information, which was called When Cards Go Bad,
Starting point is 00:08:59 was I had written a little blurb. Oh, I had started this thing. Let's talk about questions. When we started the website, I started a thing called Question of the Day. Because I really thought it was important for us to be answering questions. And the way Question of the Day worked is every day we'd pick a question. We'd go find the most appropriate person to answer that question. So if it was a rules question, the rules manager answered. If it was a templating question, the editor would answer it. If it was a design question, I'd answer it. If it was a templating question, the editor would answer it. If it was a design question, I'd answer it.
Starting point is 00:09:27 And so somebody asked me about why we made bad cards. And I gave a short but concise answer. The person then wrote back with a longer letter saying, hey, and a much more lengthy complaint about it. I then used that letter to write, that was my jumping off point to write the Why We Make Bad Cards article, which really was one of the earliest articles I wrote, and really I got a great response, and it did a lot to teach me how to respond to that. Anyway, I realize I've segued off my column today, talk a little bit about the history of answering columns.
Starting point is 00:10:00 I'll get to answering questions in a sec. So then I got on Twitter and started answering questions on Twitter. And then eventually I got to Tumblr. I started using Tumblr to post my comics, Tales from the Pit. And then eventually, or very quickly, it asked me if I'd be willing to answer questions. And I clicked yes. And then woohoo, we were off to the races. Now, so I've answered questions in many contexts. I've answered questions through email, in magazines, online. I've done it through social media, on Twitter, on Tumblr. I've answered
Starting point is 00:10:37 a lot of questions. In fact, the statistics I use is on Tumblr, for example, that I'm now five years in, I think. I've been doing my Tumblr for about five years. And I've answered somewhere in the ballpark of like 90,000 questions. And then if you add in, you know, Twitter and email, I have answered probably, I mean, 200,000 questions. Let's say 150,000 questions. I've answered a lot of questions over the years.
Starting point is 00:11:08 And so what have I learned? What do I know about answering questions? What's the key? First and foremost, what I've learned is understand the medium that you're answering the question in. Meaning, certain mediums require different kind of answers. For example, if I am answering questions on Twitter, like by the definition of Twitter,
Starting point is 00:11:31 I don't have a lot of space to answer the question. And one of the things I learned is, I mean, every once in a blue moon, I'll do a multi-part answer. But usually, I try to answer a Twitter question in a single tweet, which means it's not the place for complex answers. It's the place for quick, pithy, little, short answers. And, but that, Twitter is really, I mean, understand your medium. Twitter is not a medium for lengthy answers.
Starting point is 00:11:57 Like, so, my shortest answers are on Twitter. On Blogatog, on my Tumblr, I have the ability to write longer answers, but I tend to write shorter answers. And the reason is, it took me a little while to sort of gauge what people wanted. Because at some level, I'm providing a service, right? I made my blog. I want it to be something that the audience wants to see.
Starting point is 00:12:21 And after doing some research, what I discovered is, the most important thing to the people on the blog as I sort of was getting an answer for me was a big deal. That people really wanted to be able to ask me a question and have me answer. The problem was I get a lot of questions. In fact, the more questions I answer, just the more questions I get. So, you know, if I've answered 90,000 questions or whatever in the last five years, that's a tiny fraction of the questions I get. I get a lot of questions. And so I try to give interesting but shorter answers because on Tumblr, the goal I realized
Starting point is 00:12:58 is I wanted to answer as many people as possible. Now, on the flip side, I do mailbag columns. people as possible. Now, on the flip side, I do mailbag columns. I do some general mailbag columns, and I do a new series called Odds and Ends, where I answer questions specifically about the set that's out. So those, I actually want to go a little more in depth. That's my opportunity to give a deeper dive answer. And so the first thing about answering questions is understand your medium and understand
Starting point is 00:13:28 what goal you have in mind. Okay, number two is you have to pick and choose your questions. I mean, A, I get too many questions even to answer all the questions, but reality is
Starting point is 00:13:44 one of the important things about answering questions is finding the right question. For example, one of the things that will happen is, I'll be reading on my blog and some topic will come up. A topic that I know is an important topic and a topic I want to answer. But one of the things I definitely do is try to find the best question so I can give the best answer. Because what you'll find is, let's say something comes up. things I definitely do is try to find the best question so I can give the best answer. Because what you'll find is, let's say something comes up, you know, topic A is all the rage people want to talk about it. Many people will ask you the question slightly different. And how you answer a question is very dictated by what the question is. So one of the next big things, the tips of answering questions is sort of be careful
Starting point is 00:14:28 in your question picking so that you can sort of say the things you want to say and answer the way you want to answer because there's a lot of nuance to how people ask questions and, okay, which segues into number three, which is understand what it is you want to say. One of the things that I find a lot when people answer questions is that they sometimes go off. And I mean, I'm occasionally guilty of this, where you answer not what is asked, but what you want the question to be. And it's an easy to get into where someone says something, go, well, and you start going off
Starting point is 00:15:08 and like, that's not really the question they're asking. It's something I've been trying to get better at, which is really understanding, read within the question and understand the subtext of the question. What is it, the person asking the question,
Starting point is 00:15:24 what is it they really want to know? Because the goal of a good answer is not necessarily answering the surface of the question, but understanding on a deeper level what the question is asking. What's the point of their question? Now, I have the luxury on my blog of I get a lot of questions.
Starting point is 00:15:41 So if something's important to people, I don't get just one person asking it. I get a lot of people asking it. something's important to people, I don't get just one person asking it. I get a lot of people asking it. So I started like, and for example, if, if 20 people ask me the same, about the same thing, but each one of them has their own nuance, it gives me a better understanding of what the question really is about. What are people concerned with? Because sometimes people ask questions, and the reality is what they really care about is not exactly what they're asking. And so one of the things is trying to understand how to give the good answer
Starting point is 00:16:15 by understanding what it is they want. Now, another thing that I do that I haven't even gotten into yet is, another big place I do questions are live. I do interviews all the time. I do podcasts. I do a lot of things where I'm being asked questions live. And that's,
Starting point is 00:16:33 while there's some different skills in live question answering, a lot of it's the same. And one of the things that comes up in the live question, like when you're answering questions that are written, you can kind of pick the question you want to answer.
Starting point is 00:16:45 When you're answering something live, you don't quite have that, like they're going to ask you a question, you've got to answer the question. And there's the same basic thing is, can you understand what's at the core of what they're asking? example, one of the things that I think is really important in any kind of question answering is figuring out what is driving the question. What made someone ask the question? Now, sometimes they'll tell you. Sometimes it's like, hey, this happened to me. Like, some people will give expository. Like, let me explain what happened. Okay, now that I explained that, I'm going to ask my question. They've given you all the context of the question, which is great. But that's not always going to happen. And the other thing for me is, on my blog, for example, one of the things is,
Starting point is 00:17:38 I have some restrictions on what I can and can't answer. There's some topics that I'm just not supposed to talk about. And so one of the things is, the other reason I have to be careful picking questions is, sometimes people, in asking the question, will state something that I can't really talk about. So I can't
Starting point is 00:17:57 use their question. Another thing that always keeps me in the mind, another one I slip up time to time, is make sure you read the name of the people who are sending you questions because I try to keep a family-friendly blog
Starting point is 00:18:10 and occasionally I answer questions without reading the name of the asker and they have a name that's inappropriate. When I discovered that, by the way,
Starting point is 00:18:19 I erased the question. So if you ask me a question and you have a not family-friendly name, usually I won't answer your question, but if I accidentally answer a question, I've had to go back and erase it. Oh, another thing for people asking questions is be polite. I have no problem with being, people being critical. I have no problem with people asking, you know, hard-hitting questions,
Starting point is 00:18:40 but you can do so being nice, you know, being polite in how you do that. That there's no reason to be antagonistic or be cruel or mean. I'm happy to answer questions. I'm happy to answer, I'm happy to take criticism and answer critical questions. But what I won't do is I do not like taking people who are not polite and who are not, who are, you know, being unnecessarily aggressive. Okay, next about when answering questions is, so you want to understand what it is they're asking, and then remember that your answer unto itself, now, when I talk about answering
Starting point is 00:19:23 questions, a lot, mostly what I'm talking about is public question answering. People do write me an email. I do answer emails. Now, note, by the way, whenever I answer an email, I write it as if it was going to be posted, but know that most of the time it won't be. But if you write me a question and I answer it, I answer questions assuming that the question might be posted. In the magic world of celebrity,
Starting point is 00:19:54 okay, someone might get excited and answer the question and might post it somewhere. I just assume that they will. But anyway, most of what I'm talking about today is answering questions in a more public eye of how to answer questions when it's your job to answer questions and when other people are seeing the answers to your questions. So the next part to be aware of is that there's an informational part to questions and there is an entertainment part to questions. Then not only do I want to answer questions, not only do I want to give you information,
Starting point is 00:20:26 but also I want to make sure that it's entertaining. So one of the things I do is, if someone asks me a question, I make sure I provide the context so that anybody else who's reading the answer understands what the question means. Because something I get all the time, especially on my blog, if someone asks me a question where I know what they mean, I'm a magic historian. I've been around for a long, long time. When someone makes them, you know,
Starting point is 00:20:50 usually I will get what they're talking about. And if they're not, often if you read my blog, I go, okay, I'm not sure what you mean. Give me more detail. I'll do that all the time. But one of the things I want to make sure is I want to make sure that I explain, I give context when giving my answer.
Starting point is 00:21:07 And the way to think of it is, a lot of times when you're interviewed in interviews, what they say to you is, the audience is not going to hear the question. I'm giving you the question so you have it, but you have to answer, you have to put your answer as if it doesn't require hearing the question. And so, let's say someone said, what color are your shoes? I can't just say white. Because if you haven't heard the question, white doesn't mean anything.
Starting point is 00:21:37 So the answer would be, my shoes are white. That way, I've given information, you know the information. And so, when people ask things, you know the information. And so when people ask things, you have to give your answer, like in an interview, a lot of the times you need to give your answer assuming the audience didn't hear the question. That's pretty true for print as well, which is you want to make sure that your question can stand alone. I mean, not that people won't read the question, but you want your answer to stand alone.
Starting point is 00:22:07 And be aware that part of what, like, part of my blog is, or anything, my Twitter, whatever, any place where I interact with the public, I'm trying to perform a service. I'm trying to give people information. But also, I have a persona. I'm the magic guy. I'm the head designer. You know, I'm the behind- people information. But also, I have a persona. I'm the magic guy. I'm the head designer. I'm the behind-the-scenes person. And I want people, like, I want to craft.
Starting point is 00:22:33 My goal is not to answer questions in a vacuum. My goal is to answer questions in a larger context. That if I'm going to be one of the answer people, I want to build a sense of faith with people. One of the things I work very hard is, for example, is I want to be very accurate. I want to make sure that if you read my question, that what I'm saying is correct.
Starting point is 00:22:56 And sometimes, one of the tricky parts for me is, sometimes I've got to give answers, but there's things I don't want to give away. That happens a lot. Where, like for example, people were asking me during Battle for Zendikar whether or not there were fetch lands in the booster packs. Okay, well, we had done Zendikar expeditions that had fetch lands. So technically speaking, you could open up a booster pack of Battle for Zendikar
Starting point is 00:23:24 and get Fetchlands. But, they weren't they were only Expeditions, they weren't normal cards in the set. So when people were asking me, are there going to be Fetchlands in Battle for Zendikar,
Starting point is 00:23:40 I realized that there's a lot of expectation and I want to let the audience know whenever, like, another thing about questions is being proactive. Sometimes it's like, oh, I think people will be confused about this or people are worried about it. I want to make sure I can calm them. So I will answer a question that gives me the opportunity to say something I want to say.
Starting point is 00:24:02 Sometimes, yeah, sometimes it's, I have something I want to say and I find the right question so that I can say that thing. I can give new information. That's another thing I will often do with questions. And when I give that new information, I want to make sure that I'm being accurate because I want you to trust that what I'm saying is true. I don't want to say things and you go, hey, that wasn't true. I want, I want, it's important to me that I create a trust between the reader and myself, you know, the question askers and myself, that I want them to know that, hey, I might not always give you all the information. Sometimes I can't.
Starting point is 00:24:35 Oh, and so for example, the tricky part was people are like, are there going to be fetch lands in Battle for Zendikar? fetch lands in Battle for Zendikar. And so I needed to answer the question in a way that told people there weren't going to be fetch lands in the set proper, but not say you couldn't open one,
Starting point is 00:24:57 because that's not true. But remember, at this point, expeditions wasn't something I knew about, so I couldn't reference them. So what I ended up doing was, I said that there was a cool cycle of dual lands,
Starting point is 00:25:12 but it wasn't fetch lands. The rear dual lands are going to be new. And by doing that, I never said you couldn't get one, but I implied heavily that they weren't in the set proper, which was true. So I both made you not have expectations that you were going to open up, you had to pre-release it and just easily open up one of the fetch lands.
Starting point is 00:25:38 But it's walking the thin line, and one of the things about being a question answerer is there's a lot of responsibility, especially when you're officially a question answerer. The other thing that's important to me is not only do I need to be careful on my information, I want to be precise, but I want to not give away information I'm not supposed to give away. But also the tone is important. That I, this is a job my presence with you and I'm presenting my company and how I present myself
Starting point is 00:26:10 and so there's a demeanor that's really important and sometimes I do answer questions of people that are not like I highly prefer people being polite but sometimes, look, the question I really need to answer I only the best person asking it is being a little aggressive I highly prefer people being polite, but sometimes, look, the question I really need to answer,
Starting point is 00:26:31 I only, you know, the best person asking it is being a little aggressive, but I try really hard to sort of, it's my job as a spokesperson to put on a good face, and that it's not my job to complain, it's not my job to yell at people. It's not my job to be overly defensive. I need to sort of straight face answer things. I need to own up to things. You know, that's another thing is if I say something, it turns out not to be true or more often than not is I say something, believing something to be true, learn more information and realize that the information I gave wasn't true, I will always come back and I will say, hey, I got new information. Sorry, the information I gave you is not true. I will correct myself whenever possible. If ever I notice that I've given information, and it's not because I mean to give false
Starting point is 00:27:18 information, there's just times where I think something is true and it turns out not to be true. There are a lot of moving parts in magic and, you know, there's things that I think I understand or think I know about, but the reality is, oh, something changed when I wasn't involved that I didn't know. And it is important to be genial. It's important to be, you have to take the high road that sometimes people will come at you.
Starting point is 00:27:45 I've had people say mean, mean things to me. I've had people, you know, part of being a public figure is you're the man and a lot of people will take swings at you and say things that they would probably never, ever say to your face. But you need to take that in stride. You need to have a thick skin. And part of answering questions publicly is trying to put that in stride. You need to have a thick skin. And part of answering questions publicly
Starting point is 00:28:05 is trying to put on a good face and say, you know, I try very much, and the other big thing about questions for me is I also am big on context, meaning I want to give you enough information that I can explain what I need to explain. And sometimes to do that, I need to bring in information that you know nothing about
Starting point is 00:28:29 so that I can give you a larger sense of context. And if you notice, a lot of the way I answer questions is to try to not just answer that question, but if need be, answer a larger swath of questions. It's very common, for example, for me to answer a larger swath of questions. It's very common, for example, for me to answer a question and in my answer address what I know would be a question based on the current question. Like I'll proactively answer questions. I do that a lot too, where I say something, I go, okay, for those that are going to, you know, like I can imagine you asking this question, let me just answer it now to save you the
Starting point is 00:29:03 trouble of having to send in the question. And so I think that it's part of what I try to do is, like I said, if you notice all these things coming together, I'm trying to be informative. I'm trying to be educational. I'm trying to have a good demeanor. I'm trying to represent my company. I'm trying to create a good demeanor. I'm trying to represent my company. I'm trying to create a familiar tone. That's another important thing is that you need a voice. I talked about, I mentioned many times how in stand-up you need a voice. In writing you need a voice. And that, you know, I work really hard that when people answer questions, that no matter where I answer the question, whether it's in my blog or in my column or in my social media or in a live interview, that I want to sound the same. I want to, like, I don't want you to read my answer to one question and read my answer to
Starting point is 00:29:56 another question and go, that's not the same person. And I work really hard. I mean, one of the things that helps a lot is I'm a writer and that I write a lot, a lot. And I've definitely found my voice. I definitely, you know, I know how to sound the way I want to sound. And be aware that not every question requires the same tone. That some questions are serious questions. And you know what? I will answer serious questions seriously.
Starting point is 00:30:20 Some questions are very, they're funny questions or jokesy questions or things that are lighthearted questions. And I will answer a lighthearted question in the lighthearted way. Unless I try to, occasionally I don't. But the idea is you want to match the tone of the question, meaning you want to sort of, while you want an overall voice, you also want to be able to adapt to each question. And be aware, that's an important thing. You have to understand what the person is asking, why they're asking it, what context they have to it, and then what kind of answer are they looking for? You know, sometimes people are looking for you to just own up to something. You know, like, oh, this was horrible. And they just want to hear you go, you know what, we made a mistake there. Yes, that was not what we aimed to be. Or here's what we were trying to do. And yeah, that didn't quite happen. Sometimes people just want
Starting point is 00:31:09 acknowledgement. Sometimes they just want to be heard. Sometimes people truly just want to understand something and they don't get it. There's many, many different types of questions. And that in some level, questions aren't all the same. And so when you get a question, you want to understand who the person is that wrote it who they are what they want what's their context and what kind of answer are they looking for because what you don't want to do is have someone looking for one kind of answer and then give a different answer um now that said also remember that if you do if you answer a lot of questions, especially publicly,
Starting point is 00:31:46 there's a contextual larger issue that I talked about, which is what, how are you presenting yourself? And so one of the things that I care about when I, like I said, I am a spokesperson. I am someone who I want you to understand and be aware. Another really important thing is the reason that I've been so up on questions, the reason that I write a column and have a blog and do social media and all the stuff I do is, I believe that information is a powerful force. I believe that, like, in my mind, one of the things that makes magic such a great game is the amount of time and energy we spend on it. We spend a huge amount of time, and we think about all sorts of things.
Starting point is 00:32:27 And that one of the things I want to do is I want people to see that. I want people to understand what we've done. I want people, I feel like when you do quality work, that educating the audience to recognize what you do is of value. That I feel that Magic is a high-quality game. So I want people to understand, hey, what should you expect out of a game? What are games capable of? And the other thing is, I also feel an obligation
Starting point is 00:32:57 that paying it back, if you will, that I learned from some great people how to become a game designer. That there were people out there that modeled for me what to do for game design. I want to do the same thing. I want to be a model for people that want to do their own game design.
Starting point is 00:33:15 And that's another big thing. Another big area I do in questions is not just behind the scenes of the game, but talking about game design in general. That I want to educate people, and I want to sort of give back. Games have done a lot for me. My life has been made so much better because of games.
Starting point is 00:33:32 And I want to give back to games. I want to give back to magic. I want to give back to games. I want to make sure that if I could take expertise that I have learned and share it with the next generation of game makers and in some way have some influence and help make the next generation of game makers and in some way have some influence and help make the next generation games even better well that's an awesome thing that is me
Starting point is 00:33:51 um like i said my true love is gaming and so to be able to give back to gaming in a way where you know i can help up the level of gaming and just make gaming ever better you know one of the famous quotes is uh i might be paraphrasing this, but if I see farther, it's because I stand on the shoulders of giants. I think that's Newton. The idea essentially is you learn from what comes before you
Starting point is 00:34:16 and the reason that you are better is from them you learn and then you build on those learnings. And so that's another big thing I want to do in my questions is try to do that. But anyway, I'm almost to Rachel's school. So to sum up, when answering questions, the major things to ask, to repeat one last time,
Starting point is 00:34:33 who is asking the question? Why are they asking the question? What is it they want to know? And then how are they answering the question? Because your answer has to match the tone of what they're asking. So when answering your question, make sure that you're giving the answer they want. You're giving the context they need. You are matching the tone of the kind of, you know, your answer matches their question.
Starting point is 00:34:57 And make sure that you are thinking larger text of what you're doing in the context of questions if you're answering a bunch of different questions. And that, my friends, is me answering questions about questions. So hopefully that was informative today. But anyway, I'm now here at Rachel's school. So we all know what that means. It means the end of my drive to work. So instead
Starting point is 00:35:17 of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.

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