Thursday 6.29.00 

It turns out that the Salvation Army is having its 135-year anniversary in Atlanta at the same time as Dragon*Con. So there's 20,000 suited servants of the lord sharing the streets with Stormtroopers. They are both in the same Hyatt hotel too - I get on an elevator with two ladies from Denmark in their sixties, dressed in Salvation army garb with shoulder epaulets, and then two young ladies board wearing dog collars, large black feathered wings, vampire teeth and red contact lenses. It's an ideal nonviolent culture clash.

Zack and I have some great footage - interviewing groups of folks playing card games and board games and slamming the tables and being excited about bein' gamers. Plus, there's miniatures, miniature painters, young ladies singing anime songs, crews of stormtroopers, and singing Klingon TV stars. We're getting a whole load of good stuff here.

It seems like most of this Con is focused on gameplaying and fan culture. What news can be pulled out of these events remains to be seen - I think the journal entries and the videos will certainly be lively. The Dragon*Con attendees are exemplary of people most dedicated to games.

Accordingly, I've been running into people that recognize our logo and are familiar with Gamers.com. It's heartening to know that people are actually reading the material on our site. We've gotten nothing but positive feedback - it seems that many of these gamers are happy just to have people paying attention to them.