Hello, my name is Melissa Makak and
this is my second blog post for Becoming Room 51. If you haven’t read
the first one, this is basically me just talking about my journey of becoming a
content creator and starting up a channel called Room 51 with my brother,
Justin, where we talk all things board gaming. The first few posts will be mainly about another channel called the Dice Tower, but it's part of the beginning of my journey and a huge part of why Room 51 exists.
In my last post, I left off on my
aspirations of becoming a Board Game Breakfast contributor on The Dice Tower (a
popular board game channel on YouTube for those who do not know). I spoke to my
brother about this idea I had of maybe trying out different print-and-plays and
talking about them as a segment for the channel. We had never actually played
any print-and-plays before, but we figured let’s try it! Turned out, we were
not into that part of the hobby and we found that out the long and hard way as
we tried so desperately to get into. All was not lost, however, as I came up
with a new idea! Justin and I love playing video games and have been playing
them since we were kids starting with the Super Nintendo all the way to
becoming avid PC players. My idea was to connect a video game we love to a
board game we love based on style of gameplay, theme, and/or the feeling you
get from playing these two games that come from different worlds. We started
recording several episodes and it would take us at least an hour to record a
very sloppy and terrible 2-minute video. In the end, Justin was not very into
it and I could tell I was enjoying the process much more than he was. After
several weeks of recording videos that we felt the world should never see, we
put the idea to bed. I was also in grad school at the time and just didn’t have
time to create content as I had to focus on school and work. Besides, it felt
ridiculous as we had never even emailed Tom Vasel (creator and co-host of the
Dice Tower) about our idea. We were just creating these videos with the hope
that he would give us the time of day and honestly, doubted he would. Why would
he answer two kids from Brooklyn who have no idea what they are doing and have
never created content before?
A few months passed and I was
watching an episode of Board Game Breakfast and Tom announced a new segment
called “Tom is Wrong” where fans could submit a video to him about something
they felt he was wrong about and it would air on Board Game Breakfast. I
thought, “Wow, I could actually be on Board Game Breakfast for an episode!” So
I thought about him stating that the game Hydra pretty much killed Battlestar
Galactica the Board Game (watching his review on Hydra made me yell at my
screen) and I knew that was what I had to speak about. I mean really, Tom?
Battlestar Galactica is one of the greatest (if not, the greatest) traitor
games of all time! It was a Thursday night after a long day of classes and work
when I recorded the episode and sent it to Tom. I had no idea if it would
actually air. The next day, tragedy struck as we had suddenly lost a member of
the family. It was shocking and the Makak household was a somber one. I would
get more into the emotional impact this had on me, but this isn’t the blog for
that! Needless to say, my mind wasn’t really on the Dice Tower, content
creation, or board games. I took the day off the following Monday, which I don’t
normally do, but I thought this was a pretty good exception. I wasn’t sure what
to do with myself that morning, so I searched for comfort in watching the Dice
Tower. Board Game Breakfast aired that morning and I wasn’t really thinking
about the video I sent in when all of a sudden, my face was on the screen! The
best part was, Tom actually conceded to my argument, which I’ve never seen him
do. For that moment, I felt genuinely happy and excited. In some small way, I got
to be on Board Game Breakfast and it was a much needed jolt of happiness during
that time. You can check out the video here at minute 48.24:
A long year had passed, I had
graduated from my grad program, it was summer time, and I saw a callout on a
website called Board Game Geek asking for contributors to Dice Tower News to
write articles about upcoming board games. I thought that would be a cool
opportunity and in some way, I would be part of Dice Tower content! Clearly, I’m
obsessed with this channel. Either way, I love talking about board games and I
enjoy writing, so I sent an email jumping on the opportunity and just like
that, I was a writer for Dice Tower News. I must say, it was pretty awesome
seeing my name attached to articles for the Dice Tower. By the end of August of
that year, I had written somewhere around 30 articles and I was feeling great
about it, but I still had that urge to create video content. That was when Tom
made a callout for contributors to join Board Game Breakfast…
Comments
Post a Comment