GeekRally – The Boston Area Geek Network

*Note: This is an unsubstantiated rumor! I’ve been by their web site and couldn’t find any info on it, so if it’s close to real at all, there’s probably just a fan in a Hit Girl costume. Of course, maybe it’s more than that…

Thursday night @ Kickass Cupcakes

Meet Hit Girl from Kick-Ass…photo opps, swag and free Kickass Cupcakes!

6-8pm Davis Square
Davis Square
378 Highland Avenue

info@kickasscupcakes.com
617-628-CUPS

I overslept and missed Comic Con today, but that made time for me to join a meetup in the Boston Commons. While there, we set up for a picnic and nearby was this Medieval musical group. We asked them to come over and play for us and they graciously accepted. (more…)

The con is at capacity and those of us in line can only get in as people leave. If you were planning to go this weekend, come early Sunday, like at 9am.

An informal poll conducted in line suggests that very few of the people here went to either Pax East or Anime Boston. At least, few who would admit it…

One of the characteristics that distinguish geeks from other kinds of fans is the way they build and extend on the intellectual content they love. In this way, they’re kind of the intellectual property entrepreneurs of media, as can be seen below.

Yeah, yeah they’ll say. Pax got 60,000 attendees, but probably nobody noticed. For 72 hours in April, Anime Boston creates a spectacle around the Hynes Convention Center that nobody can avoid, no matter how much they avert their eyes.

In many ways, one might liken it to a gay pride event. Anime fans are encouraged to celebrate their love of Japanese cartoons, video games, and pop culture by dressing up and showing off. Anime Boston’s official attendee count is 17,000, making is significantly smaller than Pax East, but also putting it in the top ten for anime conventions nationally. From the picture below, you’ll see that while you may have missed that Pax was in town, there’s NO MISSING ANIME BOSTON. (more…)

Yesterday the biggest Anime Boston yet opened to the theme of Mad Science. It was crazy, it was weird, it was fun and musical and inspiring and wondrous. And there’s still time to go. Registration is open all day and the con goes all night long, so come downtown and don’t miss out!

It’s beginning. People have been gathering around the Hynes like the Black Orcs to Mordor. If PAX was the 2nd Age, then Anime Boston is the big-eyed, long-limbed, giant sword weilding 3rd age of geekdom for Boston. Heh. Mixed my genres a lot there.

If Vericon was a shot across the bow for Boston geeks, PAX was a carpet bombing assault. Yet now we look forward one weekend and in the same location we have ANOTHER three-day geek event: Anime Boston.

The thing about PAX East was that for the most part, it was just 60,000 people in black t-shirts and red plastic badges. The weight of their presence was clear and definite, for in it’s way, also largely ignorable by the general populace. Anime Boston however will feature throngs of girls in Link drag, innumerable ninjas with open toed shoes, and warriors with montrous cardboard weapons in hand and spiky hair. It will certainly be more meaningful and harder to ignore for the locals.

As we move into the second half of our Month of Geek Weekends, I wonder if this is all a good thing for the local geek community or a bad thing. Does making Boston the Mecca of east coast geek activity mean we’ll see more geeks locally and more geek infrastructure like comic book shops, arcades, and sushi bars, or will the close proximity of so many large events cause them all to mutually destroy each other by lowering everyone’s attendance below critical mass?

This past weekend a gamer was caught trying to download the code for the XBLA game Breach onto his laptop during PAX East. When asked by the staff why he was plugged into the Atomic Games network, he said flat out that he was copying the game so he could play it at home and share it with his friends.

The guy had also also previously had his gamertag banned from Xbox Live for stealing Forza 3 and playing it early. The weird thing is that he asked the XBox Live Director of Policy and Enforcement to unban him during a panel at PAX East.

So, how do you explain this guy? Is he a true believer in digital freedom, willing to defy The Man because data and fun want to be free, or is he just slow to absorb the idea that companies want you to buy their products and don’t like it when you steal them?

GamingBolt article with more detail and video of the suspect here.

Some people have observed a lonely or sterile atmosphere at PAX East this past weekend. At first, I attributed it to PAX East’s immense size, but in retrospect maybe it’s as simple as this: when you go to a scifi or anime or comic book convention, you collectively share your love of the subject at hand in a kind of group worship which forces you to reach out and connect. At an event like PAX, almost everyone is at a console or sitting with their DS, which draws their attention inward and away from the masses around them. I found that that liveliest and most social rooms at PAX’s free play areas were the board game, RPG, and card areas. The console free play areas were significantly lonelier feeling, even though they were larger and better attended.

The group interaction of more traditional board games or media consumption lends itself more easily to social connections that portable or console play.