R&D

R&D is an abbreviation for Research & Design, formerly Research & Development. It is a section of Wizards of the Coast that create upcoming sets and cards. Design creates the vision, development upholds that vision even if it has to make some changes to get it there. The design/development split is a very important facet to Wizards R&D. It ensures that each set has two different set of eyes overlooking each decision to make sure that what we end up with is the best the set can be. Other teams in Magic R&D are creative, editing and digital. Despite the R in R&D, there is no research team.

From the release of Magic 2014 on, design and development teams are officially referred to as "Initial Concept and Game Design" and "Final Game Design and Development" teams, respectively. Although these names had previously been in use at Wizards of the Coast internally, the announcement for M14 was the first to use them in public.

Design

The designers create new cards, mechanics and themes for Magic sets. Every set should do something innovative that hasn't been done before. It also set should bring back something from the past and present it in a new light, it should add new elements to old ideas. Every set should make players have to shift their thinking about the game in some way, while creating a moment that is uniquely its own. By definition, also some bad cards have to exist, even at rare. The rules of design provide four major functions: structure, clarity, consistency and focus.

Design can be bottom-up or top-down. It can also be linear of modular.

Stages of design (history)

Head designer Mark Rosewater distinguishes five stages of Magic design, and corresponding dynasties of Magic designers.

First Stage (the Golden Age)

Alpha through Alliances. This stage was about the focus on individual card design. Design decisions tended to be made on a card-by-card basis.

• Richard Garfield
• The "East Coast Playtesters", fellow graduate students in the math and physics department.
  • Skaff Elias
  • Jim Lin
  • Chris Page
  • Dave Pettey
• The "Penn group", members of a local bridge club.
  • Charlie Catino
  • Joel Mick
  • Don Felice
  • Howard Kahlenberg
  • Elliott Segal
• The Canadian connection.
  • Steve Conard
  • Robin Herbert

Second Stage (the Silver Age)

Mirage through Prophecy. This stage was the introduction of the block and the focus of design in thinking of Magic in terms of a year. This was also the era of the psychographics with Timmy, Johnny, and Spike first getting defined.

• Bill Rose
• Mark Rosewater
• Mike Elliott
• William Jockusch
• Henry Stern

Third Stage (the Bronze Age)

Invasion through Saviors of Kamigawa. This stage was the introduction of block themes. Blocks were no longer just a collection of mechanics, but contained specific things chosen to highlight the block's theme.

• Randy Buehler
• Mike Donais
• Brian Schneider
• Worth Wollpert
• Aaron Forsythe
• Elaine Chase
• Devin Low
• Brian Tinsman
• Tyler Bielman

Fourth Stage

Ravnica through Rise of the Eldrazi. This stage was the introduction of block planning. Instead of picking a theme and continuing it through the block, design now planned out how exactly the block was going to evolve. This planning allowed for themes to be better set up and paid off. Members of the fourth generation includes several participants of The Great Designer Search (GDS) 2006, Wizards of the Coast's historic search for R&D's for a Magic design intern.

• Mike Turian
• Erik Lauer
• Nate Heiss
• Matt Place
• Alexis Janson (GDS winner)
• Ken Nagle (GDS runner up)
• Graeme Hopkins (GDS runner up)
• Mark Globus (GDS)
• Paul Sottosanti
• Gregory Marques
• Mark Gottlieb
• Steve Warner

Fifth Stage

From Scars of Mirrodin until now. How mechanical themes are looked at and used is radically changed. In the previous two stages, themes had been used as the foundation to build the block on. Starting with Scars of Mirrodin, mechanical themes are now thought of as tools used to put a block together. Metaphorically, themes are no longer the canvas, but the paint. The fifth generation includes participants of The Great Designer Search 2 (2010).

• Dave Humpherys
• Zac Hill
• Tom LaPille
• Max McCall (GDS & GDS2)
• Billy Moreno (GDS2)
• Gavin Verhey
• Kelly Digges
• Matt Tabak
• Ethan Fleischer (GDS2 winner)
• Shawn Main (GDS2 runner up)

New World Order

R&D is always fighting complexity creep. They have always tried to make the cards as simple as possible (which is sometimes seen as "dumbing down the game"). New World Order refers towards R&D's movement towards putting less complexity in the common rarity slot. The concept was introduced in 2008.

Stages of design (practical)

Advanced planning

Also known as pre-design or advanced design, advanced planning is the latest innovation in how Magic sets are designed. Long before design starts, advanced planning begins. The concerns itself with the needs of the block and loops in the development and creative teams. The team can talk about mechanics and how each color plays out, but is not concerned with an actual card file.

Vision, integration and refinement

Mark Rosewater distinguishes three distinctly different yet equal-sized stages in the main design phase: the vision stage, the integration stage, and the refinement stage.

"Devign" – Structural Development

Devign is the space in between design and development. Design still has control of the file but is addressing notes from the developers. During these early times, Development try out cards that feel risky, but could also add something cool and interesting to the game. Early playtesting is for taking the big swings. Many of the cards design hands over in the initial handoff will not make the final version of the set, and many more will get tweaks, such as to casting cost, power and toughness, or activation cost. Still others will get cut from the set entirely to make room for new cards that either fill a specific role that is missing or are just independently cool cards. On the opposite site, some fun cards are made stronger.

Development

At its essence, design is responsible for vision, and development for execution. Many think that development's job is to just tweak numbers and correctly cost things, but the main job for developers is to make Magic as fun as it can be for all the different types of players. Most of the time is spent working on game-play design to ensure the play experience is as good as it can possibly be. This means that the mechanics and themes and overall feel of a design file should express themselves satisfyingly when actual games are played. The developers try to find the most fun parts of the design and bring them to the forefront of the set, and kill unwanted elements. Casting costs and other balance issues for both Limited and Constructed are still considered. To assess the strength of a card or card set, development uses a process called "pointing'.

One of the most important parts to developing sets today is to create cross-block synergies so the sets within Standard play well with each other, but also so that there is enough of a change when Standard rotates to change things up. A diverse and shifting metagame is a healthy metagame. After structural development, there is format development. By the time format development begins, most of the previous set is locked down, and the new set has to integrate with it for both Limited and Constructed.

Creative

The creative team begins work on the card's creative elements once the card is in its near-final state (ideally).

• Concepting – Creative looks at the card's mechanics and decides what kind of creature / spell / location / object it should be within the setting.
• Art Description – Creative writes an art description for the artist based on the concept.
• Art – The art director commissions a freelance artist to illustrate the card. The artist illustrates it to the art description with feedback from the art director and the creative team.
• Name and flavor text – Creative solicits and selects from contributing writers' name and flavor text submissions for the card. Keywords are also given their final name by this group of people.
• Packaging text – Very short summaries which capture the essence of product and flavor.

At the very beginning of the creative proces there is a concept push of world-building, where a specially picked team of Magic artists are flown in for a couple of weeks to generate sketches and ideas for what a brand new world looks like. This results in a style guide

The creative team als contributes to articles (Uncharted Realms), webcomics, player guides and the occasional book.

Editing

While design is going on, the team has a check-in with the rules manager to make sure that what they are doing things that will work. The editing team is constantly monitoring the card file as it goes along. They start editing it usually at some point during development. And even in design sometimes they’ll make notes on general wordings. Then futher in development, templating starts. Each set has a lead editor. Together with the rules manager (who may be the same person) and the development lead get together and try to figure out how the cards have to read. Editing also involves writing reminder text. Furthermore, it is Editing’s job to make sure the art comes in and the names and flavor text get done, and takes care of collector numbers and other information below the text box. After the cards are physically laid out by the CAPS team (Creative and Professional Services), Editting gives the final go ahead to create the print sheets.

Digital

The Magic Digital R&D team, not to be confused with the Magic Online team, is responsible for coordinating game design resources for digital projects, like building decks for Duels of the Planeswalkers or creating the list for the Magic Online Cube.

Trivia

• Look at Me, I'm R&D from Unhinged is a parody of R&Ds playtesting process. The card looks like the card Moat with a sticker pasted on top of it, which R&D uses for playtesting. The cost, card type, and the rules on the card have also been modified with a pen during the playtest, presumably because the printed rules proved counter-intuitive or overpowered. The card is also the successor to Look at me, I'm the DCI from Unglued.
• Designer is an Unglued creature types which was eliminated from the Comprehensive Rules list during the Grand Creature Type Update (Richard Garfield, Ph.D.).

See also

• Future Future League