What Does a Nerd Look Like?

A Game Designer's take on Booth Babes, Frag Dolls, and those pretender nerds at events.

I'm not going to start this article by defending my nerd roots,  I'll just leave this picture of little nerd me at Christmas here. This is why I have an NES controller tattoo - not so everyone can be original and do the Konami code on my arm. 

If you're reading this, you probably have already read "Booth Babes Need not Apply" on CNN.com and John Scalzi's response concerning the validity of many women's presence at geek culture events such as comic cons. I felt like I had to write a response as well because, I agree with both! I hear both sides here. 

R.I.P. to my GTA 360 - A Life Well Played

There are some who put their special consoles on display, where they lazily collect dust in mint condition until their eventual move to storage or ebay. Shelved, they would never get to update to NXE, or experience the otherworldly joy of being accessed with a Kinect. My GTA Lost and Damned console would suffer no such fate, as I embraced it's mobile nature and wandering spirit. This is it's story.

The demise came quickly and without warning. Black vertical lines suddenly spanned the display, dancing - taunting me. I hoped it was the game I was playing, L.A. Noire. Mere moments ago I had been reading about Team Bondi's woes during the development of the game; perhaps this was evidence of those problems. I pressed the guide button. No stripes! Oh wait, there are faint stripes. Back to the dashboard!

My avatar is in the middle of getting beamed up by Scottie from the looks of it.

Increasingly worried, I turn off the console and restart it... to a flashing red light and a big fat e74 error; a screen I am all too familiar with after losing it's Halo 3 brother on Christmas.
Now that it was really over, I couldn't help but begin to reminisce about my console's exciting life. *wavy back in time effect*

New Release: The Kobold Guide to Board Game Design!

I attended a great game design workshop run by Mike Selinker last week at PAX Dev in Seattle. If the specific content of the conference weren't confidential, I would have written more about it. What I will say is, I choose my sessions carefully at industry events, and I was happy to miss three other speakers for this workshop. This is why I am so excited to report that now you too can attain new heights of game designery wisdom. Selinker 's newest book, The Kobold guide to Board Game Design, is now available!

The book is also available in a handy PDF edition for $10

Contributors include the amazing:

•Rob Daviau

•Teeuwynn Woodruff

•Paul Peterson

•Richard Garfield

•James Ernest

•Dave Howell

•Andrew Looney

•Steve Jackson

•Michelle Nephew

•Lisa Steenson 

•Matt Forbeck

•Jeff Tidball

•Dale Yu

•Richard Levy

• and artist John Kovalic

Chances are you have games from some, if not all of these designers! Just to name a few: Fluxx, Gloom, The Big Cheese, Cthulhu Munchkin, and a bunch of Magic cards are visible from my armchair vantage point.

Oh my God! There's an Axe in My Head. - Seattle board game designers are off to a great (kick)start

Seattleite game designer David Fooden will be at Card Kingdom demoing the game he co-designed this Wednesday, September 7th. It's called Oh My God! There's An Axe In My Head. and there is still time to take advantage of the special offers on the game's Kickstarter page.  Oh My God! There's An Axe In My Head. is available with exclusive bonus cards and free shipping for a $45 pledge (MSRP $50), but pledges can start as low as $1. At upper levels of contribution, incentives include a handcrafted, 1 of 10 limited edition of the board game.

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