READ NOW: Job Opening at WotC Design - Contest

[Godder]

So, the Great Designer Search has begun on mtg.com. Will anyone here be taking part?

More importantly, what do we make of the First Round of questioning? I'd be very interested in our thoughts on some of those questions...

[dandan]

To apply, you need to write a 250-350 word essay for each of the ten questions below. If any question is under or over the required length, the entire test may be discarded.

Introduce yourself and explain why you are a good fit for this internship.
Explain three positive ways "mana screw" affects Magic.
Name a popular, existing mechanic and explain how you would make it better.
From a design standpoint, what was the best thing about the Champions of Kamigawa block?
From a design standpoint, what was the worst thing about the Ravnica block?
We design cards for three player psychographics: Timmy, Johnny and Spike. In the average set, who should the most cards be designed for? Why? Who should the fewest cards be designed for? Why?
Imagine you must eliminate a card type (artifact, creature, enchantment, instant, land or sorcery) from Magic. Which one would you choose and why?
You stumble upon a time machine and travel back to the early 90's. What is the one change you would recommend Richard Garfield make with Alpha? (You must recommend a change.)
You are forced to move counterspelling out of blue. What color do you move it to and why?
What is Magic design currently doing wrong? How would you do it right?

Sadly Seattle is not in commuting distance of Slovakia.

[asi]

Imagine you must eliminate a card type (artifact, creature, enchantment, instant, land or sorcery) from Magic. Which one would you choose and why?

Creature and Land really can't be eliminated, because they not only appeal to the players, they are really the basis of the game (that is why beginner sets (i.e. preconstructed decks for starters) have lots of them.)
 Artifact/Enchantment and Instant/Sorcery overlap in some ways; eliminating one of them by replacing it by the other wouldn't ruin the game. Instants make the game more complex and interesting, so i would definetely keep them. Artifacts are cool cards and can be tapped (well, technically enchantments can be tapped, too, it just looks silly if you played the game for some years). So I think it's either Sorcerys or Enchantments. Enchantments are permanents, so they have more interaction with other cards, so I think Sorcerys would be eliminated. An instant can be worded to be only "sorcery" playable (like lots of abilities are) if it needs to be, and Sorcery effects can be made on Artifacts/Creatures/Enchantments which you have to sacrifice to get an effect. I'd cut Sorcery, but it's close to enchantment.

Some of those questions are really interesting. I think I'll edit more into this:

You stumble upon a time machine and travel back to the early 90's. What is the one change you would recommend Richard Garfield make with Alpha? (You must recommend a change.)

I would suggest to keep in mind that rarity of cards does not necessarily make them balanced; good cards can be acquired by the players to make a deck better than the decks of his or her friends, so good even that it obsoletes most of the cards. Good cards shouldn't make a game too unfair for someone with a smaller cardpool, and should not obsolete other cards if possible. On the other hand, cards shouldn't be "unplayable", or at least not too much of them. Alpha had too many Moxen and too many Laces for my taste.

You are forced to move counterspelling out of blue. What color do you move it to and why?

White obviously, because it deals with prohibitting things. Red and Green don't deal so much with this and also don't care about magic in pure form, and Black usually cares mostly for creatures, not for spells to destroy.

[parallax]

I'm pretty sure discussing specific question is off-limits.

Confidentiality. Until the deadline has concluded for completing the then-current portion of the Search, contestants may not discuss that round, including without limitation discussing any assignment or quiz on any online message boards, forums or the like. Failure to comply with this confidentiality obligation may result in disqualification.

I would like to say that this is a very interesting oppurtunity. It would be nice to see multiple ManaDrainers at the final rounds.

[vartemis]

Imagine you must eliminate a card type (artifact, creature, enchantment, instant, land or sorcery) from Magic. Which one would you choose and why?

I would eliminate enchantments.  Global enchantments are basically the same as colored artifacts, and local enchantments can be replaced by equipment.

You stumble upon a time machine and travel back to the early 90's. What is the one change you would recommend Richard Garfield make with Alpha? (You must recommend a change.)

I would tell him to up the print run, because this game is really going to take off.  I would also get him to double check everything to make sure nothing is missing, such as say... a dual land, or some casting costs

You are forced to move counterspelling out of blue. What color do you move it to and why?

I would likely move it to black, thereby giving it a chance against artifacts and enchantments.  Originally I was going to say white, but it already has ways to deal with artifacts, enchantments and creatures.  If given the choice though, I would either not move it, or get rid of it altogether.

Black can deal with creatures and removes stuff in opponents hand before it is cast.  Once they are in play, that is where the problems arise.

Green can deal with artifacts, creatures and enchantments, although creature removal is the most difficult and out of color for it.

Red can deal with artifacts and creatures, and enchantments are its weakness.

White can pretty much deal with everything.

Blue cannot really deal with anything once it enters play, other than to bounce it, or ping it.  That is why they have counterspells.

Too bad Im not eligible to work in the states...

j

[Bram]

Seriously, are you guys trying to get yourself DQ'd? 

It would be nice to see multiple ManaDrainers at the final rounds.

Actually, it'd be nice to see even one. What are the legal ramifications for the 'eligibility'  clause, by the way? Do you have to live there already, or is it enough that there's no reason you wouldn't be allowed to work in the USA?

[vartemis]

Seriously, are you guys trying to get yourself DQ'd? 

It would be nice to see multiple ManaDrainers at the final rounds.

Actually, it'd be nice to see even one. What are the legal ramifications for the 'eligibility'  clause, by the way? Do you have to live there already, or is it enough that there's no reason you wouldn't be allowed to work in the USA?

As of August 25, 2006, you must be legally eligible for long-term work in the United States for any employer and to live in the United States. Upon request, proof of such eligibility must be provided to Wizards.

that rules out me anyways.  As a Canadian, I can't even apply for the green card lottery.

j

[asi]

Seriously, are you guys trying to get yourself DQ'd? 

Living in Germany is really great, even if it means disqualification for something as cool as this.

vartemis, I think you think too utility there. Just because one colour currently can't deal with something properly doesn't mean it should ever be able to do so. I think it would be just strange to have black have counterspells, because black can't cancel any magic that hasn't manifested. Black Planeswalkers don't do that, they don't sit there and counter something that hasn't even entered play. They whait, curiously, to see whether it can be used, abused, or have to be killed, maybe reanimated later, if he feels like that. This is just my opninion, but I think white is a natural fit for this role.

btw: Black traditionally dealt with such stuff through Nevinyrral's Disk. It's one of the "blackest" artifacts ever, because it really completes what black wants to have.

[Matt]

Well, real life intervened and I didn't complete this on time, so I'll just share what I've written with you guys. I doubt I could have accepted the offer anyway, I honestly had only the intention of seeing how far I could go.

1. Introduce yourself and explain why you are a good fit for this internship.

My name is Matt, a 23-year-old Austinite with a flair for the creative.

Dreaming up new ideas comes very naturally to me. I've spent a lot of time - dozens, maybe hundreds of hours - designing Magic cards. I've led and managed a large Internet-based card designing forum on www.themanadrain.com for several years now. I've created hundreds of cards and written several essays on the most common and dangerous pitfalls of the amateur Magic card designer.

As part of my leadership role in the aforementioned project, I have had to become intimately familiar with the policies and reasoning behind many of R&D's cardmaking decisions. In that same capacity I have also been called on to moderate competing schools of thought, and have a successful history of forging effective compromises. I have initiated projects aimed at organizing our forum's collective output into player-made Magic sets, and this has also entailed the occasional restructuring of our processes and goals.


2. Explain three positive ways "mana screw" affects Magic.

Mana screw seperates the wheat from the chaff in tournaments. By making the construction of a strong manabase a prerequisite for success, the threat of manascrew gives strong players an additional battlefield on which to best their opponents.

3. Name a popular, existing mechanic and explain how you would make it better.
<the best I had was to let soulshift get any combination of spirits as long as their total CMC was less than or equal to the soulshift number. I don't know if soulshift is exactly 'popular' though>

4. From a design standpoint, what was the best thing about the Champions of Kamigawa block?
The major mechanics weren't on the cards themselves, leaving lots of room for nifty smaller cards <needed to flesh this out>

7. Imagine you must eliminate a card type (artifact, creature, enchantment, instant, land or sorcery) from Magic. Which one would you choose and why?

I would choose land, and with it bring a fundamental change to the game. I would allow spells themselves to be the game's resources, by letting you play them as resource cards which can tap for any color of mana present in their mana costs (i.e. Hull Breach would be a Taiga, and Sliver Queen would be a painless City of Brass). I have actually played with this ruleset casually when I had a bunch of packs and no basic lands, and the game adapted remarkably well.

The big upside of this switch would be to remarkably lessen mana screw, which is one of the least enjoyable and most frustrating outcomes for a game. Every card can at least be tapped for mana. This also opened up a world of interesting play opportunities - it turned out that the Ravnica common "bouncelands" were still really good, letting you get back a spell you were forced to use as mana early on while still tapping for two. It also turned the Nephilim into very high draft picks, since they could tap for four colors and really turn your manabase on.


8. You stumble upon a time machine and travel back to the early 90's. What is the one change you would recommend Richard Garfield make with Alpha? (You must recommend a change.)

I would reccommend he restructure rarity so that simple cards became the most common and the complex cards rarer.


9. You are forced to move counterspelling out of blue. What color do you move it to and why?
Assuming I have to move the entire mechanic to one color, I would go with white, because the big impact of counterspells is how well they communicate the message "NO," delivered in a huge, booming voice. That kind of authoritarian tone best fits white.

But let's not assume I'm so confined. I would break the mechanic up and have each color execute it in their own way.

White would get the hard counters, for the reasons I explained above (love of authority).

Red would get the conditional counters like Mana Leak. Cards which may or may not do what they say they'll do: how red is that? I would try and recast the flavor of these as a threat - "Are you SURE you want to do that?"

Black would naturally have to sacrifice resources - probably life or creatures - to counter spells. Black's counters would be of any kind (soft or hard) but always require additional resources (think Abjure).

Green would get a type of counter not so often used - the protection counter. Green would be able to counter spells but only when those spells try to harm the green player or those under his protection - think Avoid Fate or Intervene.

[Anusien]

Ephraim is not able to apply, seeing as how he's trying to get himself in a relationship (bah!) and a job (feh!).  I finished my application, and I may post it later.  It's a bit wordy though.

[Venven]

My application was 10 paragraphs about Mark Rosewater's various fetishes. There's no solid rulings on the internet and slander, right?

[jro]

I managed to complete the thing about nine minute before it was due.  I was bummed, though, because I didn't really have enough time to think about the questions as much as I would have liked.  I gave pretty stock answers to a bunch of them.  Sometimes, I'd write 300 words, and then realize how I really wanted to answer the question, but time prevented me from fleshing it out.

Briefly, I picked Channel for my ability to expand on (because it seemed to have the most potential-- I would also have liked to do random effect cards, but they've done a really good job with them lately), land for the type to eliminate (it's more exciting than the other choices), Dragons for the best design in Kami block, color dilution as the worst thing about Rav, I'd send the text of Man'o'war back to Richard Garfield, put counterspelling in white for flavor or green to give it stronger control elements or to every color, and I said the biggest problem in Magic is cards that are unloved by anyone, and also mentioned the fact that the past bunch of blocks have exposed a lot of design space without really exploring it thoroughly.

[Jacob Orlove]

I entered, although I'm not sure if I got my application in at 11:59 or juuust after 12:00, so I may or may not be in it.

[Nazdakka]

I entered (with a full 30 minutes to go ), and I'll post my entry once I get turned down for the next round - I'm British, and the lack of a work permit probably eliminates me.

[Anusien]

I had put mine in a day early. 

Congratulations! You have made it to step two of the interview process for The Great Designer Search, the exam round.

Unfortunately, while Bob is my uncle, mum is my word.

4) Do not share this link, discuss the questions with anyone or post the questions online.  Doing so may be grounds for disqualification from the contest.

Magicthegathering.com will be putting the test up at a later date.  We would like to give the general public a chance to take the test so we kindly ask you to please refrain from discussing the test until that time.

[Nazdakka]

Congratulations! You have made it to step two of the interview process for The Great Designer Search, the exam round.

I made it

[Matt]

I'm sure I would have bumped you off.

[Anusien]

Submitted round 2.  They're likely going to post the test, and I can't wait until they do because there are some questions I'd love to discuss.  Sorry, NDAed to hell and back.

[Nazdakka]

Submitted round 2.  They're likely going to post the test, and I can't wait until they do because there are some questions I'd love to discuss.  Sorry, NDAed to hell and back.

Just submitted mine. Again, can't discuss questions, however interesting they are :-/

[Anusien]

I haven't heard yet.  Has anyone else?

[Nazdakka]

I haven't heard yet.  Has anyone else?

Nothing here. Probably some kind of tiebreaking going on.

[parallax]

I haven't heard yet.  Has anyone else?

Congratulations! You have made it to the third and Semifinal Round of the interview process for The Great Designer Search, the card design round.

I received this Friday. I find it hard to believe that you wouldn't have made it, Anusien. I can't imagine you doing poorly on that test.

[Jacob Orlove]

I was hoping that email was going to go out today, but if it went out Friday, then I definitely didn't make the third round.

[Nazdakka]

I haven't heard yet.  Has anyone else?

Congratulations! You have made it to the third and Semifinal Round of the interview process for The Great Designer Search, the card design round.

I received this Friday. I find it hard to believe that you wouldn't have made it, Anusien. I can't imagine you doing poorly on that test.

Well done.

Me:

There were some close calls in the test - some of the questions could have gone either way IMO. I guess you got them right.

I wish they had sent out 'No' emails as well as 'Yes' ones though.

[Godder]

With the number of entries they had, I'm guessing they had a lot of people who weren't successful. The 'bad luck' emails may or may not come out, but they're probably focussed on getting the 'you're in' emails done first for obvious reasons.

[Anusien]

Because it takes so long to mass mail a second set of e-mails?

Yeah, I'm rather suprirsed too; there were a few I was dubious on and I can see them wanting perfect or near-perfect scores.  In other words, missing 4-5, which was reasonable based on my confidence in my answers, could have easily disqualified me.

Or I could have missed like 15.  We'll see later, since I have all my answers and rationale for choosing them saved on my HD for when the test comes out or we can discuss.

[parallax]

Because it takes so long to mass mail a second set of e-mails?

Yeah, I'm rather suprirsed too; there were a few I was dubious on and I can see them wanting perfect or near-perfect scores.  In other words, missing 4-5, which was reasonable based on my confidence in my answers, could have easily disqualified me.

Or I could have missed like 15.  We'll see later, since I have all my answers and rationale for choosing them saved on my HD for when the test comes out or we can discuss.

Yeah, I'm sure any 'Sorry' emails would have been sent at the same time as the 'Congrats' emails, as it's surely done by a script.

After looking back over the questions, I've not quite as surprised that you were eliminated. There were a few difficult questions in there. I was reasonably certain of almost all of my answers after some intense thought, but it would have been easy to miss 4-5, which would almost certainly eliminate you with so many participants. I'm personally certain I missed no more than four, and it think it's closer to one or two.

Sorry for everyone that didn't make it. Wish me luck so I can represent our community in the finals. Also, good luck to anyone else that made it.

[Matt]

Man now I am really wondering what kind of design questions there are with right and wrong answers!

[Nazdakka]

Man now I am really wondering what kind of design questions there are with right and wrong answers!

Maybe it's not going to work that way. ~50 people is a small enough number that you can mark them by hand, and I don't think that a multiple choice test is the right way to accurately gauge design skills.

From my point of view, even if I had made it past that last round, I don't think I'd have made it past this stage - I think the stuff this one is apparantly going to be on is a weaker area for me. I felt I had to try though, so I wouldn't be left wondering "What if...?".

[Anusien]

Logistically it was a nightmare for me; I have a rent commitment through June, and I'd be taking off a semester from school.  But it is literally the job opportunity of a lifetime so I had to try.  I kinda wanted to lose, but in the later rounds.