Wizards of the Coast

One of our first Seattle events was a tour of Wizards of the Coast. This was arranged by the wonderful Stacy Whitman who is an editor there. We knew we were in the right place as soon as we walked into the lobby. The giant dragon sculpture was a big hint. The kids were very impressed with this dragon and with the larger-than-life knight who contemplated the dragon from the other end of the lobby. We took some pictures and looked over the display shelves while we waited for Stacy.

Wizards of the Coast is now owned by Hasbro, so there were some little kid toys out on the lobby table. Patches happily occupied himself playing with Mr. Potato Head. Gleek, rather appropriately, played with a barrel of monkeys. Stacy then arrived and took us on a tour of the facility. At first I felt just like I was walking back into a Novell office building where Howard used to work. Gray carpet and gray cubicles were everywhere. But then I realized that instead of the normal boring landscape art, the walls were covered in fantasy and science fiction art. Wizards was displaying concept art for their various games and books. Also Novell never had a life size model of R2D2. That was cool. The kids all greeted him like a long lost friend. But only Kiki and Gleek consented to be photographed with him.

The tour was somewhat abbreviated to match the attention spans of the kids. Patches was carried for the whole tour by Howard because it was hard for him to keep up. As we passed cubicles I noticed that many of them were very decorated, a practice Novell certainly never encouraged. I could tell that these were creative people and there was a sense that everyone was happy to be there. These were people working at their dream jobs and I could tell. They had everything from a little kitchen to a break area with two jigsaw puzzles in progress. I could tell that it was a good place to be.

The tour ended at Stacy’s cubicle where she had stashed free stuff to give to us. The kids were delighted with all the collectible cards, particularly with the neopets cards. They continue to play with them and Kiki has even ventured out to Neopets.com to create her own virtual neopet. It was a good tour and a good visit.