Release The Geek

It's now officially December, which means we can start with the year in review stuff! Vittorio and Les sit down to discuss the gems they discovered and made them happy through the year to date: from movies to games plus much more!

This week's episode examines the world of tabletop miniature gaming - if you're not sure what I'm talking about, the simplest explanation is 'toy soliders', but it's much more detailed and interesting that that. In particular, our focus is on Warhammer 40K

Produced by the UK's Games Workshop, Warhammer 40K is one of the world's most popular tabletop games - the rich backstory explaining the various armies, and the quality of the figures has made 40K a dominant game worldwide for over 30 years. However, the universe the game exists in has rarely changed in any great way - there has little 'progress' in the storyline, to put it in a very basic fashion.

But June of this year, saw the release of the 8th edition of the 40K rules, and there have been some earth shattering developments that are moving the story forward in a new direction. Why, after almost 30 years, has this happened, and is this a good thing? To get to the bottom of the story, we reached out to our fellow casters at the Geek of All Trades podcast - Gregg Barlow and Douw Pretorius - who are up on all things 40K to get the low down on the latest edition changes, what the potential ramifications are game-wise, and what were the market forces that might've driven Games Workshop to make these changes after so many years.

Lisle Wilkerson is an American voice actress, with an impressive list of credits to her name. Fully fluent in Japanese after growing up in Tokyo, Japan, Lisle moved into radio DJ work on J-Wave and was inspired by the voice luminaries of the age, including Wolfman Jack.

Lisle has gone on to achieve fame as the voice behind Nina Williams and Christie Monteiro from the Tekken series and Sarah Bryant from Virtua Quest. Lisle was gracious enough to chat to us about all manner of things including getting her start in the radio industry in Tokyo, the differences between voice acting auditions in the US and Japan, and her experiences with Sofia Coppola and Bill Murray on the set of 'Lost In Translation'.

This year has seen the rise of the term 'alternate fact' - the phrase was used to describe demonstrable falsehoods in an attempt to make them seem real.

This particular podcast, recorded earlier in the year, is inspired by the term. Alternate universes abound in the comics world, some to much greater effect and fan acclaim than others - we invited the Variant Covers team of Greg Nell, Limpho Moeti and Nas Hoosen to discuss which comic alternate universes were their favourites.

Rob Salkowitz is an internationally recognised expert in the intersection of digital media and social and business trends. Rob has worked with a range of organisations to help engage with specialised audiences, identify new opportunities and articulate their vision for the future.

In addition, Rob has written four books including Comic-Con and the Business of Pop Culture, which uses SDCC as the backdrop in discerning what the drivers will be for the future of entertainment.

Rob graciously found time in his schedule to chat to us about a range of topics including some of the trends in pop culture conventions around the world, where the newest innovators of technology can be found, and we discuss future trends in the people management of pop culture events.

Esports has become a massive part of the gaming landscape, and rAge is becoming the showcase venue - Kwese was on hand with an incredible stage hosting the first ESL Africa tournament (congrats to Energy Esports for a comprehensive CS:Go performance over Bravado gaming

We chatted to two people at rAge who are in different areas of the esports world: first up we chat to Lauren "Pansy" Scott - a professional CS:GO shoutcaster from the UK who has become a full time ESL employee. Lauren was brought to SA by the Kwese, and was gracious enough to spare some time to chat about her origin story, and some advice on managing the expectations of budding shoutcasts.

Then we spoke to Zybrand "Zeylox" Lombaard who manages the CS:GO Rejects team for Veneration Esports. Zybrand has shifted from player to manager, as he realised he couldn't commit to the amount of time required to be a competitive gamer, but still wanted to contribute and be part of the scene.

South African born comedian Urzila Carlson is a regular on televisions screens across Australia and her adopted home of New Zealand. With appearances on "Have You Been Paying Attention", "7 Days", "Super City" and "Road Madness", Urzila has become much sought after on the international stage, both as a headline stand up act and as an MC.

Urzila was recently holidaying South Africa, and was incredibly gracious enough to take some time to sit with me after performing at the Goliath Comedy Club in Johannesburg, where she shared her comedy origin story, her love of watches, and discussed the state of coffee across the SANZAR nations.

Graeme Selvan and Louis Du Pisani are the developers guys behind Robot Wizard, a Joburg based game development studio who are hard at work on their debut game, Jengo - a retro throwback to the 'point and click' era of gaming with a modern and appealing coating. Jengo is very much a story-driven game filled with with bittersweet humour & brain teasing riddles in a world of failed video game characters that didn't quite make it as top-line gaming characters in games we know and love. In June this year, Robot Wizard announced that Playdius Entertainment had signed on to be the publishers for Jengo, which also brought the guys to Gamescon in Germany where they showcased the game for the first time. But now, the time has come for South Africans to try out the game at rAge this weekend. In addition to being able to try out the game itself, you also have the chance become part of the game: Robot Wizard is still looking for the voice of the game's main character, Jeff, plus other voice-overs the game might require.

We sat down with Graeme and Louis (with input from Cody, the shaman general of the operation) to chat about their respective paths to geekdom, the origin story behind the game itself, and we talk about their future plans for their Kickstarter proposal.

To kick off Season 4, we decided to take a slightly different angle on an age old facet of geek culture, regardless of interest: he scenario argument. It could be book versus movie: which was better? Who would win: uperman vs Hulk? Kirk vs Picard vs Sisko vs Janeway etc. etc. Tech geeks could argue over which flavour of operating system is better. Sports geeks argue about which their top five players of all time, or which championship team would beat any other championship team.   Part of the fun of being a geek is the ability to play around with the variables, put them in different situations and see what happens. Earlier this year, Vittorio and I sat down with the Variant Covers crew of Limpho Moeti, Greg Nell and Nas Hoosen to throw around some scenarios of our own, but not in argument format: if you could have access to any comic book artist for a commission, what work would you have them create? Money was no object, nor was time - this conversation was more about which artists we cherish and hold dear, and what we would like to seem them create.

We round out our third season with one more panel from ICON 2017 and we're continuing with the esports theme. Last year, ICON 2016 played host to a panel discussing the state of esports in South Africa, and it was a very busy year for esports since then.

Last month saw the completion of TWO major esports events in South Africa (the Rush event brought to you by NAG, and the VS Gaming event), last weekend saw the inaugural Valkyrie Girl Gamer competition with 50 thousand rand prize money as well as the announcement that the Nexus in Randburg, Johannesburg will play host to the Hearthstone European Summer qualifiers for South Africa. The profile of esports has never been higher. And all of this can be framed against the backdrop of Valve's DOTA 2 The International, which has amassed an incredible prize pool of over 24 million US dollars.

With the massive growth of esports locally, we'd like to present to you this year's ICON 2017 panel talking about the state of esports in South Africa, hosted by SA's Tech Girl, Sam Wright.