Garfield, and M:tG in general, has been a huge inspiration for me over the years. Magic is such a creative system of constraints, story, card complexity, competitive ecosystems, strategy and metagaming. It also allows a really personal approach to deckbuilding, play style and fun in general. Not to mention the financial aspect of the secondary market, which is an entire field in and of itself... A lot of the lessons learned from studying the game's strategy have helped me cultivate new mental models in my approach to problem solving.

At one point I even took a career break and designed a game, like Garfield says, that I wanted to play that couldn't find. The game is called Sin Rummy - a variant on Rummy based on Gandhi's seven social sins. It was tough to develop, design and produce but I was able to use a lot of intuition from playing Magic all those years to balance it. My starting design constraints: a complex game with tons of replayability that would be easy to pick up and learn, all printed within a single deck of cards. I was super happy with the end result (even if the Kickstarter didn't go nuclear as I had hoped) and still play it all the time. If anyone wants a copy, send me your address (email is on the site in my profile) and I'll mail it to you.