Release The Geek

Sameer Parker is passionate about board and card games. He's part of a 6 person crew that gets together regularly to play games of various types with the following constraints: budget, time factor and conflict avoidance. Sameer has taken these regular game play sessions and started 'Table For Six' - a games review blog that offers concise reviews by a group of gamers that take their fun seriously!

Kieran Reid comes from a dramatic arts background, and became interested in gaming due to the similarities in the audience aspect and the story narrative. Taking the audience idea to another level, Kieran and his team stage Megagames - think the United Nations meets roleplaying. Now you might think that'd be a bit boring, but imagine a world set up in an X-Com style universe, with an alien presence trying to take over. Teams of people representing countries work towards their own agendas, however they still need to work towards preventing an alien force as well. Kieran was kind enough to chat to us about the concept of Megagames, and how the acting and gaming worlds have some surprising similarities!

Final edition of our 'Summer Series' - we sat down to chat with South Africa's own Kandyse McClure! Kandyse was kind enough to take time out from a busy day of work here in Johannesburg to share plenty of stories with us: from finding her love of the dramatic as a girl in Durban, to taking the stage in Vancouver, then on to Battlestar Galactica and beyond. We also chat about the project she was working on at Shine Studios, as well as her interest in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics).

Just in time for its second birthday, GeekXP caught up with Owen Swart, co-founder of the DeeTwenty Geeking Venue in Randburg, Johannesburg. We wanted to know more about why Owen decided to upon this little venture, the challenges of being a small business owner in the geek sphere and where the club is headed next (figuratively and literally).

Each year, Warzone Miniature Wargaming Club in Johannesburg hosts 'Warcon', a weekend event with multiple tabletop gaming competitions and a fantastic social element. Deon Barnard and Sarel Greyling, Warzone committee members, have decided to take this weekend event to another level. We chat to Deon and Sarel about their respective paths to geekdom, why Warcon is taking a step up and what people can expect at the full weekend event taking place October 24th and 25th at Jeppe Quondam in Bedfordview.

Daniel 'Doc' Myers wears many hats, but has a particular set of skills that we wanted to chat about, specifically the following combination: 'Doc' is an author, an eccentric cook and a food historian. Combined, 'Doc' writes medieval cookbooks, and has even written Dwarven cookbook. We caught up with 'Doc' at Gen Con this year and chatted about his medieval culinary writings, worldbuilding concepts for sci-fi and fantasy writers, and ... cloaca.

This week, we're talking about South Africa's biggest annual video gaming, computer, technology and geek culture exhibition - the rAge Computer and Gaming Expo! Winner of the best consumer exhibition in 2014, this year's rAge is aiming for their biggest crowd yet - over 36,000 people with the tag line "Escape To Planet rAge" really summing up the experience.

Who better to tell us about the all that's happening, including an update on the Cape Town edition of the exhibition coming next year, than Michael James - the man who started it all!

Chris de la Pena is an Orange County based sound designer with deep music and gaming roots. He was exposed to both at a young age, but it took a while for Chris to realise that he could actually combine his interests and start creating the sounds he was hearing in the games he loved to play. Getting better and better at his craft over time, Chris now works with a company that would rank high on the list of preferred employers for most geeks - Blizzard Studios. Chris was extraordinarily kind enough to spare an hour after a long work day to chat to us about all manner of things including: - how he planted his gaming roots quite early when he inherited an early Atari model with a stack of games - how his family's muscial background getting him started, at age 8, on the path of writing music (a tip of the hat to Slash from Guns N Roses to the guitar interest) - and we get to take a peek behind the curtain regarding how sound designers go about planning their sounds and music for the best effect, including how to best use low frequency sounds. Plus, he helps us figure out exactly how you would mic a bagpipe for studio recording ... and the logic behind it is pretty simple.

Incredibly well known in the comics industry, Brian has many strings to his bow: artist, writer, pencilier, inker, editor. Brian's past credits include, among many other things, co-creating the Witchblade character, penciling and inking Spawn during his time at Todd McFarlane Productions, and the epic 370 page sci-fi/adventure graphic novel Anomaly - which also has a companion augmented reality app to take you even deeper into the characters, the setting and the story. On top of handling the story and illustrations for the new Image Comics title "Faster Than Light", which also carries an augmented reality component, Brian also runs DigitalArtTutorials.com, helping people take their artistic skills to another level using Photoshop. Plus, he's also managing to work on a sequel to the Anomaly graphic novel, which is due out next year. With a workload like that, you know that we're incredibly grateful to Brian for sparing an hour to chat to us about all manner of things including: - How, while growing up, a group of friends tried to get him into comics by cherry-picking the best of the best titles available - How the lack of guaranteed work in the comics field led Brian to getting a Masters in Screen-Writing, which led to him writing on various shows including Lois and Clark - And how a timely change in the Augmented Reality SDK added a new, rich layer to the Anomaly graphic novel, which also extends to "Faster Than Light". Plus, Brian reveals a little about a new comic coming out next year that will also carry AR in its pages ... making that comic a true Jekyll and Hyde proposition.