Sunday Thoughts: Why Next Weekend Matters So Much

I don’t really write much personal editorial on TSA any more.  In fact, I don’t really write very much at all – with my baby daughter (rightly) taking up most of my spare time and a new job enthusiasticly soaking up my daytime hours, I don’t have a great deal of the day left for blogging.  Sure, I’ll do the odd review when I can and if I’m up in the middle of the night changing a nappy I’ll see if anything needs covering, but apart from that it’s pretty quiet.

This isn’t a reflection on the site, of course – I still think TSA is wonderful.  It’s just that over the last couple of years I’ve floated away from it a little bit, at least in terms of the so-called ‘front line’.  Behind the scenes I still help out with the coding and site design elements and pop up in group discussions about things that matter, but I don’t feel nearly as connected.  Certainly, most decisions are now made without me, and I wouldn’t want it any other way.

When Michael and myself first set up this website, way back in 2007, we just wanted somewhere where we could talk about gaming and – if we were lucky – have a few people talk back.  There was no agenda, no goal, no traffic quota to aim for.  It was simple, it was fun, and it was, as anyone trying to run a website in their spare time will tell you, really, really hard work.

We made plenty of mistakes.  We were too enthusiastic with diving into things without really thinking them through, we didn’t really give much thought at first to the community that was slowly emerging around us and we didn’t really take on board the opinions and wants of other people perhaps as much as we could have done.  There’s no-one to blame for that other that our own naive selves.  We’re programmers, not editors, not journalists, not anything remotely to do with the industry.

But we were friends, and continue to be.  Michael is one of the nicest, hardest working and generally all-round brilliant guys on the planet.  We’re in constant contact and – you’ll probably know – are working on an iPhone game.  But we’ve only met, physically, once.  I’ve known the guy for about ten years, and we’ve met once.

[drop]When running the site became too much, too stressful, it was the brave shoes of Peter that stopped things from falling to pieces.  Peter is a communicator, he’s an organiser, he’s a much stronger willed people than I am, and he’s much, much better at keeping TSA on the straight and narrow.  His level-headedness saved the site (in more ways than one, trust me) and when I look at it now, it’s an entirely different site than it was when I was (poorly) managing it.

Handing over the keys wasn’t easy – but it had to be done, and there was nobody more suited than Peter.  Who, get this, I’ve never met.  Not once.  Likewise with Dan, who looks after all the news output, or Kris, who keeps the features and content flowing.  Apart from a few of the Scotland-based guys, there’s never been a big TSA gathering.  There’s no office, no central base, just friends who met online doing their best to make something that they think other people might want to read.

That’s all going to change this weekend.  At 2011’s Eurogamer Expo, we’re all meeting up, and I’ve literally no idea how it’s going to pan out.  I’m a introvert, I panic about meeting new people, and yet here I am hugely excited about what everyone’s going to be like and how they’re going to react to each other.  But I know it won’t be tense.  It won’t be full of fuss or awkwardness.  Everyone will have a common ground and we’ll all have a beer or two together and act like old mates.

We’ve fallen out over emails, had heated phone calls, called each other every name under the sun and then made up a day later with as many <3’s as you can fit on a line before it word-wraps.  There’s been stress, anxiety, but there’s been elation too, and there’s been the ever present encouragement from the readership that seems to stick with us through thick and thin.  And yet we’ve never met any of you guys either.  If you’re in London for the Expo, do get in touch.

Until next weekend, then.  I can’t wait.