Episode 228: The Past, Present, and Future of MTGO, ft. Ryan Spain

Ryan Spain, now the Creative Director of Magic Online at Daybreak Games, returns to The Dive Down to talk about the transition of MTGO from WOTC to Daybreak, goals and hopes for the platform's future, and the realities of managing such monolithic software.

We learn about how Magic card frames pose challenges for MTGO's file sizes, how two factor authorization was developed, and why MTGO still doesn't exist on Macs.

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Timestamps:
3:07 - Housekeeping
7:40 - Ryan Spain of Daybreak Games joins The Dive Down
12:14 - Creative Directing Magic Online
14:25 - Transitioning M:O to Daybreak
18:35 - How M:O fits into the Magic ecosystem
24:40 - Bugfixing and developing M:O
31:08 - Future plans for M:O
54:18 - The economy of M:O
1:05:15 - Engagement with formats on M:O
1:08:20 - Where's the Mac version?!
1:13:16 - Experimentation on M:O
1:18:34 - Some final thoughts
1:21:00 - Wrapping up
1:22:39 - Secret track

Links from this week's episode:
https://www.mtgo.com/news/mtgo-stateofmtgo-10112022

Our opening music is Nowhere - You Never Knew, and our closing music is Space Blood - Goro? Is That Your Christian Name?

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