Recent Stories with tag nerds

Oh hello, nerds. Can't wait another two and half months for your precious Tron sequel? You're in luck, as on October 28th, Disney is hosting Tron Night all over the country (and even internationally), in which devoted geeks can briefly leave their mothers' basements stop playing WoW excitedly stand in line see twenty minutes of the new Tron film. (20th Century Fox did something similar for Avatar last year, which definitely served to boost the hype.) 

Locally, there's five Seattle-area IMAX theaters where you can catch the Tron Legacy sneak peek: Lincoln Square, Alderwood, Southcenter, Thornton Place, and Pacific Science Center. As of right now, it looks like free tickets are still available for all five locations. Have at it, nerds.

Penny Arcade Expo 2010 is over now, and some 60,000 gamer nerds have gone back to their basements with backpacks stuffed with free decks of Magic cards, wearing Portal 2 t-shirts, and clutching fistfuls of beta invites for new online games like Firefall and Rift: Planes of Telara. The free stuff is nice, but the unabashedly nerdy companionship at the Convention Center this weekend was better. Until next fall, when PAX returns, the community will have to settle for bullshitting on the forums, gathering in homes for D&D and Munchkin Cthulhu, or playing games together online. No one could blame them if they are, as I am, suffering from a mild but pervasive post-PAX depression.

I went to PAX Prime (as opposed to the newer East Coast version) primarily as a curious observer, since the closest I've personally come to the hardcore gaming lifestyle is plunking down at my computer for marathon hours of Solitaire. How can such a huge convention throw down in Seattle every year with such little mainstream press? Well, we're a music town, and Bumbershoot is usually this same weekend.

But game giants like Valve, ArenaNet, Nintendo, and Microsoft live here too, and I'd venture to say that gaming generates significantly more money than music in Seattle does—and has just as much emotional impact on its consumers. Penny Arcade itself has a hell of a human interest angle or two I'd like to see more fully explored (funny, insightful Northwest gamers with wives/kids/a webcomic make big, use their influence to create a safe and rad place to be a gamer, raise many dollars for kids with cancer, remain humble while doing so). Plus, PAX has music too! For PAX Prime 2011, we must do better, Seattle.... (more)