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Originally posted by Battle_of_Twits:
Anyone else going to try out for the Great Designer Search 2?

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Originally posted by -PoX-:
Well if you're going to play a game of chance where skill has no effect whatsoever, may I suggest the roulette? Almost 50% odds if you bet on colors!

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???

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Originally posted by Battle_of_Twits:
???

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+1

Also, good luck! That would be awesome to watch you play (and of course hopefully win)!

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Originally posted by Battle_of_Twits:
???

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I'm fairly certain 99% of the applicants are qualified for the position in equal measure and the only way he'll pick them is by a random thing like one of them replies to emails with crossword puzzles or tells him a funny story about the invention of coffee the same day he just watched a youtube video about Starbucks.

I remember one of the stories he was telling about the last contest was how he was influenced to pick Ken Nagle because he was the first one to reply to a particular part of the contest, before the deadline was over.
His "rationale" was that he must have had a lot of confidence to do this.

Of course if 100 people had done what Ken did and only 1 guy took all the time he needed, then he would have picked him under the rationale that "he wanted someone who really knew how to take their time to flesh out an idea".

Or that time he hired Matt Cavota for a position on the website because he answered his job application by creating fake magic cards or some shenanigans.

Basically the entire process is designed to find excuses to weed people out that have nothing to do with designing magic cards.
Even the way Mark Rosewater got his job as head designer dictates he did it by sucking up to people and using his connections and he regularly lets random people who work at WoTC be part of design teams for whatever crazy reasons.

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Originally posted by gaeacradle:
I think that's the most ridiculous sealed start that I've ever seen.

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Originally posted by stab107:
If you haven't found out in about a month, I'll let you know. Finally put together a full set and applied for redemption, so I can weigh the block once it gets here .

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Originally posted by caquaa:
meh, just randomly pair and let people play.

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No, not meh. Cross pairing is extremely unfair to everyone. It shouldn't happen, and it will never happen while I'm judging an event.

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Originally posted by -PoX-:

Or that time he hired Matt Cavota for a position on the website because he answered his job application by creating fake magic cards or some shenanigans.

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Right, because that shows creativity, which is what they're looking for in the candidate.

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Originally posted by Tha Gunslinga:
Right, because that shows creativity, which is what they're looking for in the candidate.

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+1.
And, really, what kind of skills are best? Designing/developing magic cards is something completely different than 95% of the jobs out there, and still fairly far removed from the remaining 5% (which would be other games in any capacity). Even when you get to something really close, like other TCG design- what professional qualifications are there to prove that you'd be a good designer?
Considering he's been designing sets since Tempest, and was the head designer of freaking Ravnica, I think he knows what he's doing. Certainly he'd have a very good idea of what to look for in a good designer.

I wouldn't be so quick to trivialize the methods of hiring simply because they have nontraditional standards.

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Originally posted by Tha Gunslinga:
Right, because that shows creativity, which is what they're looking for in the candidate.

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That was for a columnist position on Wizard's website, not a card design position.

Read who's on the design teams and you'll notice pretty fast that any excuse is good to get anyone on there. Artists, computer programmers, game designers, pro players, former developers, rules people and so on, usually on the premise that they work near Mark Rosewater's desk / saw a movie with him once.

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Originally posted by Bugger:

Certainly he'd have a very good idea of what to look for in a good designer.

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Here's a test to know if I'm wrong: put everyone's name into a hat and hire a random person for a design internship and see if you can tell the difference!

I'm guessing: no.

You could also take the top 10 designers as picked by Mark, have them design 30 cards, and then pick 10 random magic players and have them design 30 cards and then get Mark to divide them between "pro designer" and "random scrub". See how well he does there.

The deal is that there's no standards for a "well designed card" because he's always all about "breaking the rules" and "making exceptions" so you get cards like Grave Titan, a 6/6 with deathtouch. He'd tell you "no, can't have deathtouch on a big creature, that's redundant" and the next day he'll say "yeah that's great because it really works with the flavor!".

See what I'm saying? Whatever it is you do can be justified as good or bad on a whim.

Designing magic cards isn't a science and the only reason he goes through such a tedious process to find more people is:

__________________
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Originally posted by -PoX-:
That was for a columnist position on Wizard's website, not a card design position.

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And creativity in a columnist is bad why?

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Originally posted by Tha Gunslinga:
And creativity in a columnist is bad why?

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Well creativity is good for every job.
So next time I send a job application to an accounting firm, I'll print the first part on a jigsaw puzzle and the second part will be a treasure hunt.

Anyway it was a great example of something you should never do that happened to pay off because Matt was competing for a job dozens of other people were similarly qualified for and his employers needed an easy "out" to set SOMEONE apart from the gang.

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Originally posted by Battle_of_Twits:
stuff

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Mark is my favorite Wotc dude and he writes my favorite column on Daily MTG. I've been reading it for years and that's why I'm saying these things.
Design is clearly something he's making up as he goes along, he constantly talks about it. All the rules he makes up he always breaks himself later on by inventing more "rules".

The real heart of magic isn't the design, it's the play testing that goes on for each set to make sure they're balanced for standard and limited.

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Originally posted by stu55:
What is wrong with this picture?

http://classic.magictraders.com/ubb/Forum2/HTML/232356.html

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I stopped reading on 3x Vengevine $17.

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Originally posted by stu55 What is wrong with this picture?:

http://classic.magictraders.com/ubb/Forum2/HTML/232356.html

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Originally posted by -PoX-:

p.s. What basic static ability do Frost and Inferno Titan have again? Haha See how fast you rationalized the decision to give it deathtouch as "correct"? He could have been: 1B: Regenerate for instance, or any number of things. And remember that he didn't start out being designed this way, it was through play testing that they made him into what he got printed as and if they had 5 more months to play test, he probably would be different.
It's extremely easy to justify how cards are supposed to be once they're done. Pick any card in any set and you could sit there making arguments for why it's well designed or argument for why it's not all day long and not go anywhere because it's largely subjective and it's play testing that truly dictates what should go on a card.

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Originally posted by Zakman86:
there'd be no way to really remove him.

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True, apart from Ice Cage, Blinding Mage, White Knight, Cancel,Pacifism, Condemn, Stormtide Leviathan,Mind Control,Brittle Effigy, Quag Sickness, Mana Leak, , Frost Titan, Necrotic Plague, Platinum Angel, Celestial Purge and to a lesser extend, Excommunicate,Reassembling Skeleton, Cudgel Troll, Phylactery Lich, Sleep, Wall of frost, Act of Treason, Mystifying Maze, Unsummon and Aether Adept there would be no way to deal with Grave Titan.
Unless they tap out in which case fireball, day of judgment, assassinate, Chandra and Corrupt also work.

But yes apart from that, it would be way too strong, as opposed to right now where it's quite a fair card to drop in limited.