Nerd Nite 82

Back to School!

Nerd Nite Edmonton is back for the Fall, and we’re eager to welcome you back. Join us to hear about video game reviews and why they suck, bike lanes in our cities, and video game history.

Nathaniel Romance-Senneville: Why Video Game Review Scores Suck

Before you may play a video game, you must buy a video game. The core thesis of this (hopefully humorous) talk is that the video game score that many use to determine whether a game is worth purchasing is less valuable than we perceive it to be. Quantified scores left by reviewers attempt to quantify so much qualitative about a game, where you can’t be sure of the journalistic rigor behind it. The aggregate score on platforms such as Steam store page and Metacritic are made of a lot of, what may politely be considered, questionable data.

Nathaniel started playing video games around the age of four, and hasn’t been able to kick the addiction. No cross-country move, undergraduate degree or soul crushing jobs have gotten in the way of the playing of video games (He even got his partner addicted.) When moving (back) to Edmonton, the bus allowed three bags. He only brought the essentials: His desktop computer, his monitor, and other things he couldn’t remember. In his spare time, he sleeps and works a full-time job.

Karly Coleman: Co-Design and City Governance – Self and Others in a Dispute Over Bike Lanes

I examine how people engage socially with changes to the material infrastructure of the urban environment, and I specifically look at how people argue about bike lanes in Edmonton. I concentrate on how humans influence urban infrastructure and how that infrastructure influences human behaviour.

Karly grew up in small towns located in northeastern Saskatchewan and central Brasil, giving her an eye for exposing the taken-for-granted in people’s lives. She seamlessly blends practicality with humour and so returned to university to pursue her Ph.D. She’s interested in bikes, cats, cozy murder, creative non-fiction, phenomenology and history. When she’s not writing about bike lanes, life in general, and her life specifically, she’s renovating her home, quelling cat fights, or performing random acts of gardening.

@szaracat – Twitter

Nisha Patel: It’s Dangerous to Go Alone

It’s Dangerous to Go Alone focuses on a brief history of games as an emerging and evolving medium for art, writing, and play, and the alarming loss of game history that continues to grow. Games are being lost every day, and without concentrated advocacy for recording and access, many may be lost forever.

Nisha Patel is a Poet Laureate Emeritus of the City of Edmonton and a Canadian Poetry Slam Champion. A queer and disabled artist, Nisha is a recipient of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Medal and the Edmonton Artists’ Trust Fund Award. Her sophomore collection of poetry, A Fate Worse Than Death, engages in the necropolitics surrounding disability, and is out now with Arsenal Pulp Press.

@anothernisha – Instagram
@anothernisha – Threads