2007 Girard Year in Review

Well, it's at the end of 2007 and these are my collected thoughts on my experiences in the past year.

CAREER

Back when I got my first job, working at Wendy's back in Great Falls, Mt, I made myself a promise. I promised myself that I would make a certain amount of money at a job by the time I reached 30 years of age. I have reached that mark and there are no signs that I have leveled off. I was given my first lead. Magtheridon's Lair is set to release in a week. It is difficult to measure success in this industry. If your product sells out, it could mean it was popular. It could also mean that the print run was small or that there was an additional bonus included in the product and that's why it sold, not based on gameplay? Is the product considered a success at that point? I would think so. I am lucky to have my designs published, there are many designer who aren't as lucky.

I am also Lead Designing my first full set for the World of Warcraft TCG. It will be Set 8 (not yet named). It will be out Spring of 09. I promise that it will chocked full of goodness. No spoilers yet.

I am on a very good R/D team. I get along with everyone on the team and I think they are all excellent at what they do. I hope our product continues to flourish.

Family

Marnie and I are enjoying California. We are moving away from our crappy apartment complex at the end of January. We are moving into a house that was made into a duplex. We will be sharing a kitchen with the other tenants. They are dog lovers so we think it's going to be amazing living there. We are paying the exact same in rent, going down a bathroom and a bedroom, but we are gaining a front yard. We can let the dogs out without having to leash them. We haven't been to Disneyland yet, which I know is a shame. We have been to the beach several times though. Both Melli and Grizzli are doing great and are healthy.

Health

I had a brief stint in a behavioral health facility back in November. This was part of the reason why I haven't been updating my blog regularly. I had some mental issues that I needed taking care of. It has been a long and painful process but I am back on the right road. Getting in to see a shrink has been a pain in my ass. I am on some medication now to help with some old problems and some new ones. Things are going better. As for the weight thing, my new medication is supposed to give me more energy as well as help me to keep focused. I plan on re-embarking on this venture.

WoW

Earnheart has been moved to Icecrown and is helping Dungeon Crawl progress. I changed his name because the joke wasn't as funny as it used to be and this mofo is clearly a force to be reckoned with. I also have Kaniya, who used to be Callyleia, and is now going to be a pvp player. Marnie got her paladin, Addisyn, up to 70 and she went from 800 to over 1200 healing a couple of nights ago in Kara. We still have multiple 70s on the Alliance side of Icecrown as well. WoW is still fun and we haven't grown tired of it yet.

Not much else went on in 2007. Another year gone. None of my sports teams did particularly well. I don't think there was anything really defining about the year that would make it stand out from any other year.

Goals for 2008

Continue to grow as a Game Designer and be more confident in my ability to design. Not have a nervous breakdown when I turn 30 years old. Marnie and I are looking forward to celebrating our 12th wedding anniversary (we are talking about renewing our vows). Lose a ton of weight and meet my goal. Just basically keep on, keeping on.

Page 92

For those of you in the know, you know what is on page 92. This was a very fun weekend and the first time that I was able to meet these guys face to face (I know, how unfortunate for them).

It's a shame they weren't smiling as much on Sunday.

Captain's Log

So it's a couple days late, but here are my thoughts about Captain's Log. However, before I do this, I forgot to mention another important person that helped me out during that time. Justin Beal was an integral part of this time period in Trek and a good friend.

One of the big things that I loved to do to get inspiration was just watch episodes. Just random episodes, during work, at home, anytime I could. I would write down what I thought was a good scene to do a screen pull from and go back and get that as an image. This is some of my favorite images from Captain's Log (For Reference - see this link for all the cards.

A Pattern of Lies - Another great face to face shot from the Trek universe.
Chameloid Chicanery - that's how she got out of the shackles (this was more about the title I think).
Nose to Nose - YEA!!! another cool face to face shot and an homage to other dilemmas that were similar.
Warp-Speed Transfer - it's cool for what it is, but could have been much better if we could show Tucker between them.
Larson - You may think that this is just a relatively lame personnel shot, but you have no idea how many hours went into getting this screen capture and then having art clean it up the best they can. This guy was on screen for a split second and there was just a split second when he wasn't moving. There was a lot of effort put into this one shot.
Worf/Jadzia in Red - This was orginally supposed to be promo cards (not sure if they were the sales incentive or not). This was a great pairing of images and worked really well on cardboard as well. I hope to explore these image pairings more in my current job, i think they look really well and players/collectors are pleasantly surprised when they notice them.
Quark's Treasure - It is really hard to get an action shot with some blur in it. I think this was an exceptional pull and if I remember right, suggested this design back during Necessary Evil or maybe Strange New Worlds. It wasn't the right time for it, but with Quark being the captain, it seemed to fit better in this set.


And of course, images that I wish could have been better, but the Decipher art department did a great job cleaning up nonetheless.

Compassionate Interference - jeez, blurry and was pulled in too far.
Krayton - another horrible image, but this was zoomed in and unblurred as much as possible.


As for the design of the set, the players loved Captains and Ships, so it was easy to give players more of what they loved, including some that they thought they might never see (Enterprise-C). I'm going to be honest here in that I felt that I did a better job on the previous set than I did with Captain's Log.

Next time, I'll talk a bit about boutique sets that were done under my watch.

All Good Things...

must come to an end.

I'm not going to talk about why they did this or how long this has been coming because..well, I don't know. Outside of chatting it up with one of my BFF, I don't really know what's going on there anymore. They still owe me money, but it's been a couple years and I don't think they are going to make good on it.

What I will talk about is the game. During the Black Year (2005), I was left with the task of being Lead Designer for both of Decipher's flagship products, LOTR:TCG and StarTrek2E. I couldn't have done it without the help I received (especially from Plaine, Kirk, Keller). I remember when I was sitting down to continue to design To Boldly Go (it was already partially done). I was thinking to myself, "how was I going to be able to do this without the grandfathers of trek?" It was going to be difficult, especially since I wasn't as experienced as my predecessors. I mean c'mon, my first trek design was this stainer card and we all know how much play that saw. I think my favorite cards based on gameplay from To Boldly Go were -
Go Big or Go Home
I have a soft spot for mini games
They aren't that bad...no really, they aren't
How about my favorite cards from an art/thematic/Girard point -
I love it when the picture tells the story
prettyblatent although, I don't know why I penciled myself in as the dead guy.
homage to Corbin
Wife's maiden name
Mikey makes an appearance
Kicked in the Knee!!!
and the Shoehorn card of the set - Data Chip this was not my finest hour.

I will talk about other sets I was lucky enough to work on tomorrow.

MRIs suck

So I went and got an MRI yesterday. My shoulders were too wide for the regular donut, so they moved me to the open scanner. The problem was the open one took 45 minutes. The doctor strapped me in and we chatted about Williams AFB (he was there in the late 70s). He finished by putting a plastic grid over my face, kinda like a football helmet, only closer to my face. About 30 minutes in, he needed to inject me with something and couldn't find a vein. I could tell he used to be military medicine because he liked to dig around in the arm, rather than start somewhere fresh. After failing a couple times in my right arm, he moved to my left hand. Another 15 minutes and I was done. Those suck.

Hopefully I'll get my results in a week or two. They are checking to see if my low testosterone is something wrong with my pituitary gland, rather than the reproductive organs.