Tag Archives: Settlers of Catan

Friday Links: Popular video games turned into horror movies

• Check out Line 25′s Sites of the Week. We heartily approve.
• Popular video games transformed into short horror films.
• The Apple-fication of everything, about design standards and a beautiful thermostat. And if you’re still in the mood for some Apple design talk, take a look at Apple’s aesthetic dichotomy (which has a really good point).
• Google kills its other plus, and how to get it back.
• Settlers of Catan, the novel coming to a bookstore near you.
• Pictures from Hallomeme. Some of it’s pretty funny.
• Richard Stallman’s tour rider.
• Beer at work: A case for drinking on the job.
• Forrester urges IT to support the Mac.

Is Settlers of Catan poised to be the next Monopoly?

photo by ginnerobot

The Atlantic has a funny article about how nearly two decades after its creation the board game Settlers of Catan is about to become a mainstream hit. They, of course, credit nerds with being early adopters paving the way for the game’s success (and I’m sure our lunchtime gamers would totally agree):

“Settlers is taking a similar path [ala Green Lantern and X-Men] to popularity. Not long after its inception 16 years ago, Settlers found a welcome home among gamers. “The nerds recognized it first” argues Charlie Cromer, a nerd culture enthusiast who’s been attending gaming conventions for the past decade. “They were the ones willing to take a chance on an obscure foreign board game.” In the case of Settlers, nerds were the early adopters that Malcolm Gladwell discussed in his book The Tipping Point, a necessary component for a product to take off.”

Profiles in Nerdery: Justin Hendrickson, drummer for Raspberry Caturday

• Astrological Sign: Virgo (please refrain from nerd/virgin jokes)
• Time at the Nerdery: Longer than Aesop and I haven’t even thrown up on the floor yet.
• Area of expertise: Internet.
• When people ask you what you do, how do you respond: Drummer for my Rock Band band, Rasberry Caturday. We have a gig every Friday at The Nerdery. Come check us out. (I program stuff too.)
• Favorite kinds of projects to work on: Anything that does not involve spelling Raspberry correctly.
• What one thing about The Nerdery surprises people the most when you tell them about it: That we actually get work done.
• Seven dream Jeopardy Categories: 1. Settlers of Catan; 2. Words Justin can’t spell; 3. Rock Band DLC recommendations (all answers take the form of “Who is Phil Collins”); 4. Laughable “Heroes” Plotlines; 5. Zend Framework; 6. Losing at Bug House; 7. There are only six categories per round in Jeopardy!*
• Favorite Fictional Nerd: I like my nerds non-fictional, thank you very much.
• According to the Wikipedia entry on Nerd, some nerds show a pronounced interest in subjects which others tend to find dull or complex and difficult to comprehend, or overly mature for their age, especially topics related to science, disambiguation, mathematics and technology. Do you know what disambiguation is: Hey, I edit Wikipedia.

*Editor’s note: In my defense, I ripped off the idea of the dream Jeopardy categories from Douglas Coupland’s 1995 novel Microserfs where the characters list their seven dream Jeopardy categories