These worlds remained only in notecard and scribble form, but in hindsight, you can see a change in how I viewed gaming. With retrospect, I think this is completely natural. Every body has ideas how to make a product better. As a history teacher, I tend to see much of the industrial revolution and modern era not as an age of invention, but as an age of refinement. Constant, ruthless refinement.
Gaming is the same way.
So we have a whole decade of time where I tinkered with games, worked on improving them, and generally becoming curious about the mechanics involved with game design. That was the point I started edging towards becoming a game designer. Then, fast-forwarding into the future, in 1995 I had the opportunity to purchase a game store. But I was no longer doing this with the eye of a gamer looking for a perfect product. I was now a store owner looking to make sure that I could help customers with their questions and listen to game stories without being completely clueless about the subject.