The Game Dame

Since moving the blog, I’ve had to start over reaching readers and my traffic is very low at the moment. However, I am impressed by all the different countries and languages who have come by to visit. In honor of you, the Game Dame readers, as well as a salute to the global appeal of video games, I offer the following messages to my international friends…

• Välkomnande och tack själv! Min groda är en hatt.
• Willkommen und danken Ihnen! Mein Frosch ist ein Hut.
• La bienvenue et vous remercient ! Ma grenouille est un chapeau.
• Velkommen og takk skal du ha! Meg frog er en hat.
• Welkomstgroet en merci! Mijn vors zit te hoed.

Please forgive and feel free to correct my non-English spelling/grammar above.

http://flickr.com/photos/pebblechen/

It’s been one year since my first Game Dame post. I originally started this blog when I was studying Game Design.* I started writing with the silly idea that if I blogged good and hard for six months, I might be able to finagle some kind of press credential for the GDC in San Francisco. I got a new job shortly thereafter and it became clear that my employer wasn’t going to give me the time off to attend the conference. Thus, I never ended up going to the GDC.

In the meantime, I noticed that there was a dearth of shaman coverage in the WoW universe so I started writing more about playing an elemental shaman, even though I have never considered myself an expert at either WoW or shamaning. One thing has lead to another and I have had the pleasure of meeting some pretty spectacular people on this-here blogspace. I even got two jobs out of it: at WoW Insider and, most recently, at The Examiner. As an anniversary exercise I thought I would sum up where The Game Dame has gone this past year and where I think it’s going in the future.

Retrospective

• 85,213 total hits
• 13,033 average hits per month (last 4 months)
• Only one regret: a post I wrote about seeing David Cook at a Dodgers game.
• Top posts:
  • How I Won the Stranglethorn Vale Fishing Contest
  • How to Prevent Motion Sickness from Halo 3

Future

Although I’ve really enjoyed writing this blog, there are certainly days where I think about quitting it. Sometimes blogging in general can get you down. Not so much here on my own blog, where I feel pretty safe and generally supported. But when I write for other blogs, sometimes I lose my faith in humanity. I think that the anonymity of the internet brings out the worst in 80% of people. It’s those times where you’ll see me vent here and in my head I threaten to quit blogging altogether. 

But not today. I still have a lot of things to say that can’t be said through my other writing venues. In fact, I’m thinking of writing a book about all of it.

And for those of you who patiently read this entire post, here’s my new picture.

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*Which I am no longer studying due to financial realities.