Palladium Books Post Terrible News Regarding Carmen Bellaire

February 21, 2017 by warzan

Unfortunately, the world of miniature gaming is not all fun and games, and as a multimedia presence and news organisation, we are compelled to print the good with the bad. It is with this I must report that after the huge blow up on the Kickstarter page for Robotech® RPG Tactics™, Carmen Bellaire who helped with the game, had posted on the page about a new project that he was launching soon on Kickstarter called Rift the board game.

While we do not know Carmen well, I can tell you that from our few meetings with him he is very passionate about his projects and takes to heart what he is involved in. With that in mind, he took to the Robotech Kickstarter page and made a very passionate post about his new project and in turn made some people angry with his statements that looked to be misguided (even if intended to be helpful).

After the debacle Carmen called Kevin Siembieda, Palladium's President and said,

“I can’t take it, man ... I am so so so sorry. Good bye.”

A short time later Carmen tried to kill himself. His wife who happens to be a nurse found him and he was rushed to the hospital. He is in very critical condition and the prognosis is unknown at this time. If you want to read the full statement you can find it here.

What can we take from this? We are all human and we all have feelings, hopes and dreams. We can be hurt by words just as easily as weapons. The ultimate reasons for Carmen to take the action he did will likely remain unknown, and while yes online comments can be pretty devastating (an issue coming more and more under the spotlight), we must also accept that this is a man that was clearly under a number of pressures from life, and as is the case in life no single issue is often the sole cause of tragedy.

We wish him and his family the best and we hope for a speedy recovery. Remember, we are all sharing the same marble in the blackness of space and getting along certainly helps.

Out of respect, for Carmen and his family, I'm not going to open a comment thread on this post. We don't know the full facts of what drove this man to do what he did, and I would not like to trivialise it.