Well Melissa,

You shouldn’t let a little critique from anyone get you down.  Good Grief, if I let that get me down, I’d be “out of this business” long ago. (LOL)

Anyway, I would ask you to reconsider your choice not to write for BGN any longer.  And I’m sure I won’t be the only one who echos that refrain.

But I’ll be the first to say it.

RB

Yes, please reconsider! This is truly sad if people are afraid to write about things that they are excited about. Those that don’t like to read them, they don’t have to. Let the rest of us enjoy and share our love for the great games coming out nowadays. Again, please do not feel bad about sharing the excitement. That’s one of the better things in this hobby of ours.

What is the problem and who has it?

I do rely on my own judgemental talents, but I really want to read about what “the insiders” may know.
I can decide for myself, but the more information I can get, the better.

I hope to see you in Essen and say “Thank you”, for your contribution in getting the English version of Agricola to the market.

/Patrik

Re: the travel portion of your article.

Don’t forget Skype. If you are bringing your laptop along, especially if you also have a webcam, you can always chat for free with your kids whenever you find an internet connection (and that shouldn’t be very difficult). It’s a great way to stay in touch!

And no, I have no affiliation with skype :)

I was reveling in the joy of what it would be to get out to Essen this year, something I hope to do many times in this lifetime but have never done..only to get down to the end of your article.  Please reconsider. you are a great writer..and how else will we hear about your exploits at OMGESSEN??? This is like a movie with a terrible cliffhanger and no “to be continued” flashes up on the screen.

Wow I thought this was all settled last week and no one had to stop anything.
I had the same thought about a cliffhanger that Tom mentioned.  We need to hear about OMGESSEN!

@ reconsidering: Not going to happen, at least not for the foreseeable future. There’s enough bad/stressful stuff in my life right now without adding any more stresses into the mix. Gaming is my escape and my fun, and I don’t want to turn it into something unpleasant, and that is what I have felt to be happening here.

I’ll keep writing about gaming, and of course I will write about OMGESSEN!, but I’ll do it in my personal blog (the link is in my bgg profile if anyone wants it). The movie isn’t ending, it’s just changing to a quieter channel. The downside there is that you have to wade through the other stuff to get to the gaming. The upside (for me, anyway) is that the only person that what I write there affects is me.

Well, and my children, when I tell their deep personal secre-- no, not really, the embarrassing stories about them are mostly elsewhere.

@ Patrik - do stop by and say hi. Like I say, I’ll be at stand 9-40 (Lookout Games) at 3 every day (possibly a bit earlier on Saturday) and rumour has it I might even have my own special autograph card thingies. I am relying on anyone I know from here to ask for one because I don’t think anyone else will be interested! *grin*

@ Ravindra I love skype too. It’s been a great way to continue and cement friendships made on bgg or bsw. My kids want me to make daily webcam calls (I bought a little eee pc to take with me, to make it easier to stay in touch) “at the same time each day”. (My reaction: Hell no, I will be having too much fun - errrm, sorry darling, I don’t know how often I will have internet access.) (In fact, I think I only have 3 nights where I definitely don’t have any internet access at all - but email might work better most of the time.)

I understand your reasons and am saddened that writing here became a stress for you.  Schade.

I wish you a wonderful time in Germany and I will be enjoying Essen vicariously through your blog.

Aw… will miss reading your columns regularly (I’d talk about how I’ll read your other blog, but I should probably be realistic...)

Hope the reduction of “stress” will turn into an increased amount of playing/fun time with the family and friends.  I’ve enjoyed the short time I’ve been associated with your fine comments and writing (here & over at Gone Gaming...)

<Note to self: if stuck on something to write about, be sure to read Melissa’s blog to see if there’s anything good to “appropriate”.. :) >

That was quite a rollercoaster of an article!  It was really exciting to hear about your plans to go to Essen finally coming to fruition, and then it was very disappointing to hear that you’ll no longer be writing for BGN.  I’m glad that you’re finally getting to go to Essen and it sounds like you’ve got a fantastic trip planned.  Hopefully I’ll be right behind you in getting to go to Essen next year, fingers crossed.  But I’m also very perplexed and confused by all these supposed problems that seem to be coming of your writing and Melissa and Dale’s too.  All three of you were obviously very excited about the games you were working on, but I don’t understand the problem.  It’s not like any of you were hiding your relationships to the games/publishers so everyone can just judge for themselves whether to take your words at face value.  It’s a real shame that anyone can’t feel free to write about whatever they feel like, and it’s an even greater shame that you won’t be writing at all for BGN going forward.  I’ll have to try to remember to visit your blog to read about your trip to Essen, but despite the fact that you said you won’t be reconsidering, I still harbor a secret hope that you do because it’s a big loss to BGN otherwise.  Regardless, enjoy Essen and Europe generally very much, I’m sure you will :)

I’m looking forward to meeting you in person at OMGEssen, Melissa, and like everyone else here, sad to hear we you won’t be writing. Even those misguided folks probably read your columns, you know… :)

I’ll add my remarks of sadness. I hate to see the unkindness of a few drive people away. I’ll echo Matt’s remarks about reading your blog - I just don’t seem to get to too many of them these days. I hope to still catch you on twitter from time to time, and maybe, some year, get to see you at BGG.Con or in Australia (since I sincerely doubt that I will ever be able to get to OMGEssen as long as I am in my current job - the odds of me making it to Australia are (just slightly) better!).

Have a good trip!

Well, I hope you have a great time at Essen Spiel Fair.  I’ve only been once but it was a blast!

And one more vote for not giving it up :)

Like everyone else I’m saddened by the news of your departure.  I’ve always enjoyed your writing on Gone Gaming and here.  I hope it won’t be too long before you feel able to return to the less quiet channel.

Congratulations, Melissa, on making the hard choice and doing what’s best for you!  I’ll miss reading your column here, but I’ll probably flip channels and catch you on your blog.

I have enjoyed reading your columns, Melissa, and I hope you find the peace and quiet that you need. You will be missed on BGN. Now I need to find your blog so that I can read your Essen reports! Enjoy your trip.

If you have stressful stuff going down in your life, then definitely take the time you need away to get through it.  You don’t need additional, artificial stresses too.

The complaints have arisen, in my opinion, because several columnists appear to be cloning each other lately.  That’s not Melissa’s fault, it’s just that everyone who writes here seems to be involved in some behind-the-scenes game development activity and is choosing to write about that and nothing else.  When all of the columnists writing about the same behind-the-scenes topic or not-currently-available game, it feels all clubby and exclusive and like they’re all trying to push something rather than share anything.

For example, I find it both irritating and amusing that Gathering of Friends, a closed, private event, gets more column inches here through the blogs than public, organized conventions like Origins, GenCon, and Essen.  There’s more news on Essen on this site than there are blogs about Essen. 

I’d like to see this site’s bloggers focus more on covering the news rather than trying to create the news.  Less “super secret” future stuff and more “this is a cool event and you could be there too, right now, here’s how!” Yes, peeks behind the game development scenes are cool, but I also want to read about a game I can get excited about and go out and buy NOW, not after Essen or next year or at some undisclosed future date.  Yeah, I want to keep an eye on the future, but I game in the present and I greatly appreciate all the bloggers on this site that focus on the here and now.

So Melissa, now that you’re going to Essen I hope you do come back and write about it!  Tell us the personal side, what you ate, where you went, what you saw (in addition to the games), so we can share in your excitement and think about going next year too.  Essen is something attainable for all of us, well, at least once our dollar rises in value again… :)

EXTREMELY well said, Diane. 

As of late, it seems like the comments section has become a quasi-debate between the BGN bloggers about “best practices” on one side and a more vocal segment of BGN readers on the other.

Reader input, to me, is always valuable.  It doesn’t mean I agree with all of it but I think reader comments always reflect the larger whole of the community reading the column.  Listening to their thoughts and giving them discussion weight is really what makes the blogs “click” in my book.

As a reader now… more so than a writer… I really feel Diane’s very well-made point about what I would like to read about when I come to BGN is spot on.

I think the writing crew here is hopefully more than able to step up to the challenge to deliver that quality content. 

As for Melissa: I think this is a bit of a loss for BGN.

As I noted in another forum:  Melissa had a certain sweetness in her writings, with a special naive & joyous enthusiasm about the hobby that made her a very interesting and “pure” read. Melissa’s posts were devoid of any boardgame politics and were a refreshing take on what it means just to enjoy boardgames.

I wonder if people (including me) have forgotten that counts for something too.  And for a website like Boardgame News, that is always special.

Good luck with your writing endeavors, Melissa!  I hope you have the most F-U-N Essen imaginable! 

You deserve it.

One point of disagreement Ryan:

“I think reader comments always reflect the larger whole of the community reading the column”

Not necessarily.  I believe that there is a “silent majority” of people who by-in-large don’t take part of the various and a sundry debates in the board gaming community, here and elsewhere.  Therefore a noisy contingent (on both sides of issues) seems to dominate.  I for one do *not* believe that they speak for the larger community.  I think most people just want to have fun with this silly little hobby.  It deeply saddens me whenever someone is driven away from a site, as seems to be the case here.

Good luck, Mel.  I’ll be following your adventure on your blog.
Cheers,
Van

Thanks for sharing, Diane. You wrote:

“When all of the columnists writing about the same behind-the-scenes topic or not-currently-available game, it feels all clubby and exclusive and like they’re all trying to push something rather than share anything.”

There’s only one way to remedy that:  get more writers for BGN who just love playing games!  You know who you are--if you like writing, Eric is always looking for someone with a different perspective to add to the mix!

Actually I prefer playing games to writing.  Maybe I should stop writing and concentrate more on the playing of games ;-)

@Matt: Be my guest. You can pay royalties in geekgold :)

@Tom: Do you know, I have a sneaking suspicion that I will almost miss the constant refreshing of every webpage or blog with any potential link to OMGESSEN! for 5 days straight. (I said ALMOST). Also, first I was a movie and now I am a rollercoaster? I was going to say I didn’t know whether I was going up or down in the world but then realised *snicker*.

@David: do definitely look us up if you make it over here :) We have met some great visiting gamers over the years.

@Diane: This is where I think the miscommunication is coming in. I don’t write about things to make people feel bad - I write because I want to share the joy. And I want to share whatever joy I happen to be feeling that day. Which may have nothing to do with the rise of the US dollar - sigh ...  Personally, I love reading about the insider stuff. I can’t say I haunt reports of other gaming events in quite the way that I’ve haunted reports about OMGESSEN! but I love hearing about what is being played at cons, even when I’m never likely to attend them (WBC, Kublacon, GoF, Origins, UK Games Expo, I am looking at you).

@Ryan: It’s a long time since anyone called me sweet or naive. Thank you for the giggles.

@Van: Thanks :)

actually thanks to all the posters here who I haven’t named specifically.

@everyone (sorry that I have not named you individually): Thanks. I’m not retiring or going into hiding, you know. Just changing lanes :)

I would certainly qualify for the ‘silent’ part of the audience up till now. I just want to say that I find self-appointed critics on this site to be extremely annoying. If you don’t like the direction of a particular column then simply don’t read it. Badgering the writer about your parcticular hobby-horse to the point where the rest of us lose an entertaining column is just wrong. It’s been said before but cut some slack, people! The column writers here are providing us with some reading choices with no appreciable reward.

Melissa, thanks for some great reading in the past. I look forward to more in your blog.

Oh boo hoo, Melissa!  Some gamers turned out to be less than pleasant.  If I had a nickel for every time some imbecile conspiracy theorist gamer wanted me to stop writing here at BGN about all the behind the scenes work I’ve done on translating Dale Yu’s essays from gibberish into human--well, let’s just say I’d have very little money indeed.  Assuming that was my only source of income.  And so what if you took some kickbacks from sheep, wild boars, and cattle?  Isn’t that what’s great about this hobby?  For example, I’ve heard so God damned much about “Dominion” over the last umpteen months, without ever seeing a prototype, or wanting to see a prototype, or wanting to play the published game, or wanting an aneurism to strike the supporters of John McCain and Sarah Palin...oh wait, that last one may not be entirely relevant...well if you didn’t work on Dominion then you can’t really be all that relevant anyway, right?  Let’s face it:  Unless you happen to know the length of Harry Wu’s inseam then you’re probably not nearly informed enough to be writing about such mission critical pastimes as board games.  And isn’t that sad that Diane Close doesn’t want to hear about The Gathering of Friends?  How can she expect to make any friends where it really *counts* if she doesn’t read endless copy about them in the “gaming press.” What color is Tuesday?  Oh, hang on, I thought this was a GeekQuestion.  I retract all of this crap, and wish you well living your totally obscure “oh no, all my BGN fame has evaporated” life.  I can honestly say that I won’t miss your writing here, since I had no idea you were a writer here.  Guess I’ll navigate back here in 2010 or so and see what’s new.