Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #323 - Late Changes

Episode Date: April 15, 2016

Mark shares stories about the changes that come late in the design and development process. ...

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 I'm pulling away from the curve. We all know what that means. It's time to drive to work. And I dropped my daughter off at the bus stop. Okay, so today I want to talk about something that I've never talked about on my podcast. Late changes. So one of the things I want to explain today is I usually talk about design. And when I'm talking about design, what's going on is,
Starting point is 00:00:26 hey, we're going first, other than interacting a little bit with the creative team. I mean, there's a lot of back and forth early on with the creative team. We have to figure out what the world is and define the world. So the creative team and design work early to sort of flesh everything out. We check in with development and editing and rules and, you know, there's definitely stuff during design we check in with, but we kind of are functioning a lot by ourselves. But as the process goes along, more and more gets done. So by the time
Starting point is 00:00:54 development gets their hands on stuff, there's a lot of moving pieces. So today what I'm going to talk about is from time to time, we have to change cards later in the process. And what that means is, if I want to change something in design, I can change it. Nothing's resting on it. There's no work that's been done outside of design. And so it's pretty easy to change something in design. But when you get into development, especially as you get later in development, it gets harder and harder. So here's what's going on.
Starting point is 00:01:23 First off, you have the art. So the way it works is, partway into development, they start commissioning art. And so the way, I've talked about this, I think I've done a podcast on creative, but essentially what happens is, they figure out what each card is supposed to do, it's called a card concept,
Starting point is 00:01:41 and then they find an artist, and then the artist does a sketch and then they do a final art which comes in. Once a card has been concepted, once an artist has started working on it, that card is locked in. That's the art that's going to appear on the card. Now one of the things that we do is we have a little budget so that, you know, if we need to emergency replace a card, we can do that a little bit. But most of the time, as the process moves along, things start getting cemented more in. And what that means is you then have to adapt to the fact, for example, once art exists, if you want to change the card, you have to match the art.
Starting point is 00:02:19 You have to make sure that the card is going to be consistent with what the art is. So, for example, this is going way, way back, but this is just back in the day when I was doing more development. So Mirage was beautiful, for those that have ever seen Mirage. Mirage was really, I mean, I guess Ice Age was technically the first block, but Mirage was really the first block that was a block, that was created as a block, that was built for limited, that was a block in any modern-day sense of what a block is.
Starting point is 00:02:52 Ice Age kind of backed into being a block. And Mirage was flavored. It had a... Its real world inspiration was Africa, so it had a lot of African feel to it. And the art director was a woman named Sue Ann Harkey, who was awesome. She did really beautiful art.
Starting point is 00:03:11 A lot of, like, Kev Walker, Paula Parente. I think she found Therese Nielsen. There's a lot of just really good magic artists that she discovered. Or, I mean, discovered it for magic. And, but one of the things that was, like, she was an amazing art director. She didn't know magic as well as some other art directors have known magic. Which, to be fair, I mean, you're not always going to find an art director that, for example, knows the game.
Starting point is 00:03:38 So, it was something that she had to learn as she was going along. But one of the side effects of it is occasionally we would get cards that contradicted the rules. Nowadays, for example, our art directors have a much better sense of how the game mechanics apply to things to make sure that when they do card concepting and art descriptions,
Starting point is 00:03:59 that it's not contradicting what the card does. So there were a couple of famous examples during Mirage where, for example, Sunweb. So Sunweb was a giant wall that sort of floated in the eyes, a flying wall. And the idea originally was that it couldn't block white creatures. It was a wall that couldn't block white creatures. But in the art, the artist drew a white dragon. Now, true, dragons traditionally are not white creatures, but it was just a white dragon. And so when you
Starting point is 00:04:33 looked at the rules text, it said, cannot block white creatures, even though we're talking about in magic, you know, philosophically white creatures. When you looked at the picture, it just was a white creature, and it was really disconcerting. So we ended up changing Sunweb so it couldn't block small creatures rather than it couldn't block white creatures. The idea was,
Starting point is 00:04:54 now the picture was already done, like we had this giant net, and we're like, okay, well what if the giant net, the small things can get through the holes of the net. We looked at it like, the net,
Starting point is 00:05:04 it wasn't a real small net, so it was like, okay, maybe small things could get through the holes of the net. You know, we looked at it like the net, it wasn't a real small net. So it was like, okay, maybe small things could fit through. Another example is there was a card. It was called Dwarven, Dwarven what? Dwarven, Dwarven something. Dwarven Scouts. It was called Dwarven Scouts was the name of the card. And we got the card back, and
Starting point is 00:05:28 the creatures looked more like goblins than dwarves. Originally, it made one, two dwarf tokens with Mountain Walk, I think. I think that's what it did. And we ended up having to change it to goblin tokens, because it just... The creatures looked like
Starting point is 00:05:43 goblins that were trying to dress up to look like dwarves because it didn't, they didn't really feel like dwarves. They felt more goblin-y. So we changed it so we had the car affect goblins. Now here's the one that hurt me the most was there was a card called Waiting in the Weeds and it was supposed to be the first
Starting point is 00:06:00 card that ever made squirrels. I was very excited. I convinced the development team that the tokens could be squirrel tokens. So the art description then had said there's all these creatures hidden in the woods. You can't see them. You just can make out their eyes, and it's kind of creepy. But the artist,
Starting point is 00:06:16 when they drew it, actually drew all these cats. They decided to let you see the creatures that were waiting in the weeds. And so once we had the illustration, they were all cats, we had to change it to cat. That's what they were. We couldn't say they were squirrels. In the end, they weren't squirrels.
Starting point is 00:06:30 So that's one example of kind of changes is when art comes in. So one of the things that also happens, by the way, is when you have art, when you have to design to art, you have to sort of look and say, okay, what are the parameters of what is going on?
Starting point is 00:06:44 What are the... For example, let's say we have a creature and we go, okay, for whatever reason we don't like that creature. We want a different creature. So first off, the thing we do is we say, okay, what kind of size is it? How big is it? We might say, okay, you know, what does it look like?
Starting point is 00:07:11 What kind of creature is it? And a lot of times you have certain parameters. Now, that's when it's a creature. Another thing that's interesting, sometimes you have spells. In spells, you have a little bit more wiggle room.
Starting point is 00:07:21 Sometimes they're very literal and they're like, okay, well, this is freezing something, so somehow we have to convey freezing. But sometimes it's a little vaguer, where like somebody's like
Starting point is 00:07:32 casting and there's light emanating from their hands or something. It's implying that there's a magicalness happening, but what's it doing? We don't see what it's doing. We just kind of see it being cast. Even a little more flexibility there. And so one of the things that happens late on is once we want to change something,
Starting point is 00:07:56 we have to figure out sort of what the parameters were. And usually, by the way, so there's a couple different things. You could make a change before art is done. You don't have to worry about the art. You can make the change before art is done. You don't have to worry about the art. You can make the change before the sketch is in, and then you can say to the artist, we've changed it to the art director. Can you, when the sketch
Starting point is 00:08:14 comes in, do we have the ability to guide the artist a little bit? Because if the sketch comes in, we give notes to the artist. Okay, maybe can we tweak something? We kind of want to do this. Can you steer them a little bit with the notes on the sketch and push them a little more in the direction we need? That sometimes can happen.
Starting point is 00:08:30 Or if the art is done, then we're completely matching art. Another thing that will happen sometimes is we'll have art and the art will be done and then the card we need to use it on gets killed and so we end up doing an emergency thing where we get different art and then that art goes to what we call the slush pile. And what that means is, anytime we have art, you know, we've paid for the art, if we can find some other place to use it, we will. So occasionally what happens sometimes is, if you're in the second set in a block, it
Starting point is 00:09:00 used to be the third set, but it used to be second or third set, but now we don't have third sets, and the art director would come to you and say, hey, I have a piece of art I really like, is there a way we can make a card for it? And so sometimes then it's like, okay, let's design the card to this. Actually in unhinged, I'm sorry, in unglued, I went to the slush pile and I took some pieces I liked of the slush pile and designed some cards just to go, okay. In fact, Gus and Temp of the Damned were both existing. Oh, and, well, those two I know for sure. Those were existing slush art that I'm not sure what they were for. But we made use of it.
Starting point is 00:09:47 Another classic one was Jeremy had made a piece of art. What was it called? It's the... I'm blinking on the name. It's the one where a guy, he's kind of in a cell, and he is just doing the same... He's drawing the same picture again and again and again and again. And it's clearly kind of gone insane.
Starting point is 00:10:05 That piece was made for a set block many years earlier and we realized that we we couldn't use it for some reason not because we didn't like the art that was awesome um and we liked the art and so years later i'm like you know i really like this art it's cool because one of the problems by the way when you when you don't art is, a lot of our art is very setting specific. You know, oh, look, it's the Boros on Ravnica. Like, well, okay,
Starting point is 00:10:34 I gotta use that on a card in Ravnica. And if we miss that window, I mean, we go back, maybe when we return, maybe we could use it. But usually, when you miss the window, then you can't use it. That's why we try to see if we can use it on the second set. But sometimes there's things that are generic enough, like, well,
Starting point is 00:10:50 the core sets had a little more flexibility to use stuff like that. But even now, sometimes, like, okay. They also sometimes can crop a little bit, where there's one little component that says where it is, but you can crop so you don't see that. But anyway, there is definitely time when you're designing to pre-existing art
Starting point is 00:11:07 where it's like you're starting from the art and that's what your top-down is. I actually enjoy that kind of design. It's kind of fun for me. It is neat to sort of take something where the parameter is a really different kind of parameter. In fact, by the way, when we did the GDS, one of the tests we did, we always would do a final test when we were bringing them to the office. And both times, we did a similar kind of test, which was what we call a last-minute design,
Starting point is 00:11:35 where something has to be changed at the very last minute. So here's another big parameter I didn't talk about. If you have to change something in the last minute, not only do you have to match the art, but if it's late enough, you have to match the collector number. So let me explain how this works. So when we make a card,
Starting point is 00:11:52 we name them, and then the collector number is based on the name. It's based on... Collector number goes by color within each color in order. So Woburg, so white, blue, black, red, green.
Starting point is 00:12:06 Um, colorless goes before white. Um, after green is multicolor, which includes hybrid. Uh, and then is artifacts and then land. Um, and anyway, so collector number goes in alphabetical order by color. Or by the devoid cards go the beginning of their color. I'm sure I'm missing a little bit. But anyway, so the idea is, if you change something late enough that the collector number
Starting point is 00:12:33 has already been figured out, then you can't change the collector number that is late enough. So what happens then is, you need to figure out how to change it such that it stays within the collector number. Okay, so a few stories here. So the first is happened during, what was the, it was Apocalypse, I think. You guys will know when I say the card. Was it Apocalypse? No. Okay, the card was, the card you guys
Starting point is 00:13:08 know as Spectral Links, but at the time it was called Spirit Links. What set was that? Oh, it was before Odyssey. So it must have been the end of Invasion. Yeah, it must have been Apocalypse. So anyway, there was a card called Spirit Links. It was called Spirit Links. And at the time, Lifelink, so the Lifelink ability, the card that really put that ability on the map was a card called Spirit Link, which was in Legends. And for a long time,
Starting point is 00:13:40 it was called the Spirit Link ability. Eventually, we keyworded it. We didn't want to tie it to Spirit Link because technically, it works a little bit different the Spirit Link ability. Eventually we keyworded it Spirit... we didn't want to tie to Spirit Link because technically it works a little bit different than Spirit Link. Spirit Link... if you put Spirit Link on a creature and it does damage, you the owner of the aura gain the life. Where if I have an aura that grants life link, then the owner of the creature gains the life. So it's a little bit different. But anyway, at the time, everybody casually referred to it as the Spirit Link ability.
Starting point is 00:14:07 So we had made a creature called Spirit Links, L-Y-N-X, like a link, like a cat. But the problem was it didn't have the Spirit Link ability. And so what had happened at the time was the whole creative team, one by one, left the company and the last member of whole creative team, one by one, left the company. And the last member of the creative team had just left the company.
Starting point is 00:14:31 And so I was asked if I could oversee names and flavor text until they could build up a new team. That's why, for example, the following is that Odyssey, I did the names and flavor text for Odyssey. And then while I was there, I trained up a new team, and there was a new team that did Dance with Flavor Text. But anyway, I was doing a last-minute pass on Apocalypse
Starting point is 00:14:50 just to sanity check because the creative team had left, and there was nobody there. So I saw this card, and I said, oh, Spirit Links, but it doesn't have Spirit Link. And I talked to the developers,
Starting point is 00:15:03 and I said, okay, we don't want this to have Spirit Link, right? They're like, no, no, no, it's important. It doesn't have Spirit Link. So I said, okay, we don't want this to have Spirit Link, right? They're like, no, no, no, it's important. It doesn't have Spirit Link. So I said, okay, we've got to change the name. I mean, because if you see a card called Spirit Links, and at the time the ability was the Spirit Link ability, you would naturally assume it had the ability.
Starting point is 00:15:19 So one of the things you don't want names to do is imply something they don't do. Okay, so the challenge at hand was that I now had to stick in the collector number. So the collector number, I don't remember exactly what it was,
Starting point is 00:15:30 but it was Spirit Links, SPI. So like, the card before it was like SPA. And the card after it was like, you know,
Starting point is 00:15:39 STA or something. And like, I had this little window to try to find a name. And so eventually we realized that we could do spectral, spectral links. Spectral and multicolored.
Starting point is 00:15:50 Because the art, it was multicolored and stuff. So that's an example where I just had to fix the name. But sometimes what happens is, and this is what we did at the GDC challenge, is we said, okay, a card is changing at last minute. Here's the art. Here
Starting point is 00:16:06 is the collector number. So not only did they have to make the card, and we've had to do this, not only did they have to make the card, they had to match the art and they had to figure out how to name it such that it would fit in the naming convention. And anyway, it's one of those things that we actually have to do from time to time. There was an interesting live challenge because it's just some parameters you're not used to working under. Another thing that can happen late sometimes is templating. So what'll happen is development will figure out a card, figure out what it does, and then it goes to get laid out. Well, just two things. Well, let me first, I'll get to layout in a second. First is templating. So first you have to template the card. And sometimes
Starting point is 00:16:57 what happens is during templating, there's some problem and they can't they end up not being able to template the card exactly the way it was intended and what happens there is they will come back uh editing will come back to the development team and say okay um well actually i guess there's a couple different things um there could be a rule problem which is okay we thought this worked in the rules but it doesn't and then they have to come back and sort of say, okay, how do you want this to work? It can't work the way you wanted it to work. Of the choices available, how do you want it to work? Another thing that can happen is one of the things that happens with templating, and this ties into the sort of the card production, is there's only so much room on a card. And the thing to remember is not only are there room issues,
Starting point is 00:17:47 but remember we have to translate. We are now in 11 languages, I believe. So every Magic card has to get translated in other languages. And other languages, some languages, are longer. The real culprit usually is German. German is about, I don't know, 25 to 30% longer in actual text length.
Starting point is 00:18:07 So we need to make sure it fits. And now it doesn't fit that when you get to other languages, German being usually the one we're most concerned about, that we can fit it on the card. So sometimes, for example, like, what is the card called? So there is, is it Jitte? Yeah, I think it's... Umazara's Jitte.
Starting point is 00:18:27 So that card originally, if it's an equipment, you do damage to the opponent, it triggers and does things. One of them was... It was supposed to produce mana beginning your next main phase. But I don't know.
Starting point is 00:18:42 I don't remember whether it didn't work in the rules or whether it didn't fit on the rules or whether it didn't fit on the card those are two different problems it was one of those and the last minute we had to come up
Starting point is 00:18:50 with another solution and they came up with a minus one minus is that right I think they came up with I think the minus one minus one like we had to come up with an extra ability last minute.
Starting point is 00:19:06 And there's a lot of sort of examples of last minute something's wrong, we have to change it. And then, oh, oops, we introduced a problem we didn't realize because it hadn't gotten playtested. That's why we have to be very careful when we make last minute changes is last minute changes usually don't have the playtesting time and especially super last minute changes. Like sometimes when we're doing templating things,
Starting point is 00:19:28 that's really late in the process. Or sometimes there's layout issues in general. Usually editing catches those of it doesn't fit or something. If the rules don't work, we have to figure out how we want the rules to work. The rules happen a little earlier, usually. So one of the things that will happen is you'll come up with something that seems pretty innocuous.
Starting point is 00:19:52 You're like, oh, okay, how about this? And sometimes the rules will come back and go, oh, well... The most common thing I'll get sometimes is to go, oh, you know, layers. Because one of the things in the way the game works is there are different static effects that affect things. How do I know what things are? What color is something? And what creature type is it?
Starting point is 00:20:12 And what abilities does it have? So in order to sort of make those identifications, because there's things that can change them, there's an order by which you know you check things. And so if you have things in a way in which the order is wrong, the classy example is all creatures with power four or greater gain flying. The problem is by the time you go to check whether it's four power or more, it's past the point whether you've determined it is flying or not. And so,
Starting point is 00:20:47 it's sort of like, the mechanic implies something the rules don't support. That if I said to you, okay, I have this card in play, oh, creature's power four or greater can fly,
Starting point is 00:20:56 you go, oh look, I have a four power creature, it can fly, and technically it doesn't because the rules, because the layers. So that's one of the biggest things that happens is sometimes, it's not that the rules don't work, it's the rules don't work in your favor.
Starting point is 00:21:12 The rules don't let you do what you think you're going to do. And what we've learned with players is players assume the card does what it says it does and so if the card doesn't make any sense unless it works some way, they assume it works that way because why would we make the card if it didn't work? So that means we have to be careful that we don't want to do things where it implies something that just isn't true. The other thing we have to watch out for, and the other thing sometimes is we want to do something,
Starting point is 00:21:38 and simply the rules don't do it. You just can't do that. And when that's the case, that's something where we have to shift things and say, okay, so one of the classic examples, the funny thing for me is, most of my development is in the past because I do design now, so
Starting point is 00:21:53 a lot of today's stories are development stories, so I apologize, a lot of these are ancient stories, but that's sort of how it comes to be. So we were trying to make a clone in Urza Saga. We wanted to bring clone back. We had made clone,
Starting point is 00:22:09 Richard had made clone in alpha, and people really liked it, but because of rules complications, we stopped making it. And then we're like, you know what, clone's awesome. We should bring clone back. And so we brought clone back.
Starting point is 00:22:19 We had art commissioned. And then we were told late in the process, yeah, we can't make clone work. Clone won't work. This can't be clone. But we already had art of, you know, sort of a mirrored image figure where they look almost the same, but, you know, the one that has a tail or something is slightly different. And so we said, okay, well, how do we mimic this kind of shapeshifter?
Starting point is 00:22:41 So we gave it a whole bunch of abilities. We said, well, it can get plus one, minus one. It can get minus one, plus one. You know, it could... We gave it a bunch of different abilities. And that ended up being Morphling. And that was like a last-minute change. The other thing sometimes, like Helm of Volrath and Tempest. That was originally going to be Mind Slaver.
Starting point is 00:23:07 I had come up with Mind Slaver. The idea is Volrath had a helm that he used that could allow him to do mind control, so you could control other players. But the rules people were unhappy at the time and didn't think they could make it work. So at the last minute we had to change it. I don't even remember what it does.
Starting point is 00:23:24 But we had to change it to something don't even remember what it does. But we had to change it to something else. Every once in a while, sometimes the change is brand directed. That doesn't happen very often, but like,
Starting point is 00:23:35 I know the unset sometimes, I would try doing something. Like the original Gleamax in Unhinged. Well, the funny thing, I mentioned Mindslaver. Originally, I made Mindslaver for Tempest. I couldn't, it didn't work in Tempest. We took it out.
Starting point is 00:23:55 Then when I made Unglue 2, which was the sequel for Unsets that didn't end up getting made, I made a Gleamax card and I made it Mindslaver. It's like, oh, Gleamax takes over your opponent. Because, you know, Gleamax card, and I made it Mindslaver. It's like, oh, Gleamax takes over your opponent. Because, you know, Gleamax has mind control. But then, when... Glue 2 didn't get made. When Mirrodin rolled around,
Starting point is 00:24:14 and I was looking for wacky, weird, fun artifacts, I brought this up again, and there was a new rules manager. And that rules manager said, no, I think we can make that work. And so, then when I made Unhinged, I had the art for Gleamax, but we made the art for Gleamax, so I had to come up with a different ability,
Starting point is 00:24:29 but I already used Mind Flavor, and it was in Black Border, meaning I now could use it in Silver Border, so I made up a different ability. One where you make up all the... I guess what made it a Silver Border card was it cost a million, so I guess it could have had a black border effect.
Starting point is 00:24:46 But anyway, we have done Mindslaver, so I made it that you got to choose all of them. Every choice your opponent made, you got to choose for them. I thought that was a cool card. Anyway, so... Oh, I was talking about how sometimes you make cards and just at the last minute they can't be made and you have to change them. So there's a lot of that running through Magic. Text length is another thing.
Starting point is 00:25:13 Sometimes, by the way, there's even things like length of card names. So there's a card called Tech, T-E-K, that was in Invasion Block. I want to say Plane Shift, but it was Invasion Block. And it had a lot of text in it, so much so that the name it had made it too long to sit on the card.
Starting point is 00:25:34 And so, I assume it was Dell, came back to us and said, okay, Dell's our editor, said, okay, I figured out we can make this work, but the name has to be short enough that we can make it work. And so we ended up coming with tech, T-E-K, because it needed to be a three-word name
Starting point is 00:25:52 and skinny letters, not even... Something most people don't realize when we talk about fitting, all letters are not made the same. For example, an L is much skinnier than an M. And so I could have multiple L's and only one M. And so it's not, a lot of times people will talk, when I talk about how, about fitting on a line, people will talk about how many characters it has. Because wait a minute, you printed such and such. That has the same number of characters. I'm like, ah, it's not just the character, it's which character. Does it have
Starting point is 00:26:21 a lot of M's? Well, then you're in trouble. Does it have a lot of L's? You can be helped. And so the idea is sometimes we'll have to do things like make changes to, like, or another common issue to solve is the name and the mana cost
Starting point is 00:26:39 can't coexist. So, for example, let's say we make a name that's a somewhat long name, and we make a mana cost that has a bunch of circles in it. So, you know, we made something that's four black, black, black and it's called, like, you know, vengeful
Starting point is 00:26:57 really mean zombie or something. It's got a long name and it's got, and so it'll come back and go, look, either you've got to shorten the name or you've got to change the mana cost. And for example, instead of being five black, black, black, maybe it's seven black or something, or six black, depending. And so sometimes we have to come back,
Starting point is 00:27:15 we have to make those changes where the name and the mana cost have a conflict with each other. Another real problem, speaking of space, is also the card type line. So, for example, in Theros, we had wanted the equipment of the gods
Starting point is 00:27:32 to be legendary artifact equipment equipment. Legendary artifact enchantment equipment. That's what we wanted. But the problem was, it just was too long. It didn't all fit. And so we had to decide which part has to go
Starting point is 00:27:47 and we're like well we want the legendary the gods made them there's one of them we need them to be artifacts because they are
Starting point is 00:27:55 in fact artifacts we need them to be enchantments because all the creations of the gods are enchantments like oh
Starting point is 00:28:01 okay well I guess you the planeswalkers wield them rather than your creatures wield them so it won't be an enchantments, like, oh, okay, well, I guess you, the planeswalkers, wield them rather than your creatures wield them, so it won't be an enchantment. It won't be an equipment. And I know a lot of people are like, why would those equipment, those feel like perfect equipment? I'm like, it just didn't fit.
Starting point is 00:28:14 That's another thing, by the way, I get sometimes when I try to explain, like, we had to change them because it didn't fit in the rules text or it didn't fit in the card type line. People are always like, well, what do you mean it didn't fit? I'm like, it didn't, you know, I used to do my Scott are always like, well, what do you mean it didn't fit? I'm like, it didn't, you know, I used to do my Scott imitation, like, Captain, I can't change my laws of physics.
Starting point is 00:28:31 Like, only so much fits. And plus, we have Germans, remember. We have other languages. And so we can't even completely max out our own things sometimes. But like, if we're all the way to the brim, that means that someone else might not be able to fit it. So, you know, I'm getting pretty close to work.
Starting point is 00:28:46 So the... I'm trying to think of any other big things. We... Sometimes in layouts, like when we did... What were the cards from? The level-up cards from Rise of the Odrazi. We had some issues there, where because we had different, like different size things, not everything fit because we had certain parameters, certain numbers had to go in certain places.
Starting point is 00:29:14 I know in Magic we sometimes run into trouble when we try to do a two-digit number. there was a card in Arabian Nights called Aladdin's Lamp that originally was supposed to cost 10 mana and they couldn't make a 10 fit in the circle at the time so the original card in Arabian Nights had two 5s, I think I talked about this during my Arabian Nights podcast it was 5 and then 5 and it just confused people, they didn't understand like 5 and then pay 5 more, it was like
Starting point is 00:29:39 55? and I know we've run into trouble from time to time when we've tried to do double digits in places that don't normally have double digits Planeswalkers is another real common place where we'll have cramped things where we'll try to do something
Starting point is 00:29:55 and it just doesn't quite fit those are particularly Planeswalkers are squeezed the most because we have a locked space we have to fill and it can only get so big. We can't stretch it any. But, I'm trying to think of anything else.
Starting point is 00:30:10 I'm almost to work. So, like, the point of today is something in that I don't think people think all the time about all the parameters we have to work with
Starting point is 00:30:19 and that sometimes, you know, in the process, cards get changed not because mechanically the card needs to be changed. Not that it's not playing well, not that it isn't doing good work.
Starting point is 00:30:29 There's some other factor that rolls in and has to affect things. Oh, the other thing I didn't talk about, I talked about us changing the card and having to be matching the art. I didn't talk about occasionally art will come in and the artist, through some misunderstanding or something,
Starting point is 00:30:45 or just the art, or there was some quality that was important that everybody sort of thought would go a certain way, but it wasn't stated exactly, so the artist didn't know that and like you don't realize the art is done, that there's a misconnect. So every once in a while, I guess I talk about the mirage a little bit, where you're changing the card because the art implies something that is not true. Like, sometimes, for example, we'll have an art come back in, and the creature kind of looks like it's flying,
Starting point is 00:31:13 or it really looks like it's not flying, and we'll come back and say, okay, could this creature fly, or could this creature not fly? Where, you know, it's like, wow, this is going to cause confusion. It looks like it flies, because one of our big rules is if you look like you fly, you fly. You look like you don't fly, you know, it's like, wow, this is going to cause confusion. It looks like it flies because one of our big rules is
Starting point is 00:31:25 if you look like you fly, you fly. You look like you don't fly, you don't fly. That flying is so, people so visually connected that we make sure that it matches. And there's some classic examples in Magic's past. Whippoorwool from the dark being the classic example of
Starting point is 00:31:39 it's a bird shown in mid-flight. Yeah, it doesn't fly. And that just confuses everybody when it does that. But anyway, today was just sort of hodgepodge-y day. Sort of talking about different stories of how cards get crafted by environments
Starting point is 00:31:56 outside of gameplay. That there are other factors that impact them and affect how they function. And anyway, I just thought I'd share some of those stories. I thought, um, it is neat sometimes when you peek behind the scenes of how you realize decisions that have to be made for reasons that you would never, ever think of. I don't think anybody who saw the card tech
Starting point is 00:32:17 wondered why it had a short name, or, you know, why... A lot of these stories are, hopefully, on our end, if we do our job, you don't even realize that we changed anything so that it fit what we needed to fit. That's our goal, was to not make you notice that we had to do it.
Starting point is 00:32:32 But we do, from time to time, so... Anyway, that was today's podcast. I hope you had a good time and enjoyed it. But I'm now in my parking space. So we all know what that means. It means the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic.
Starting point is 00:32:46 I'll see you guys next time.

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