Nerds, Geeks and Dorks

If you haven’t already realised I’m a bit of a geek, my girlfriend would even go as far to say that I put as much effort into shooting American 12 year olds online as I do pleasing her. I’d certainly agree that I have a problem with gaming, but I still have a social life, a girlfriend and other hobbies, unlike some of the people I met on Friday.
At HMV on Oxford St on Friday one of the gaming industries biggest names, Hideo Kojima, came to town for a signing session, If you’ve lived in a cave all your life or just plain didn’t have a childhood then it would be news to you that Hideo Kojima is the man, nay the genius behind the Metal Gear Solid series loved by all, and by some to a level of un-healthiness. Stupidly though I underestimated the level of love for the Japanese legend, I expected a table at the back of the shop with a reasonable que and the whole event would be over in a few hours, what I found was so much more nerdy.

What I found were 300/400 MGS fans cramped into the store queuing to get their copies of the new game Peace Walker signed by Kojima. I arrived to scenes of a super fan being ejected from the store by the police for what can only be described as ‘over excitement’, this kid was clearly so excited he jizzed himself, and I thought I was bad.

The guy in the middle is Hideo Kojima, I was under the impression before I arrived that I would be able to join the que and get a picture, but I was wrong, HMV  being the evil capitalists that they are would only let people get near Kojima if they bought a copy of the new game. This was about as close as I could get by peering through the poster racks. In his native Japan, Kojima is a God and hot girls just follow him all around the world like modern day geishas, sucking him off (probably) whenever he pleases, lucky bastard!

So knowing that I wouldn’t get a chance to be in the presence of Kojima, I decided to photograph some of the people making up the crowd, apparently some of them had been waiting for over 6 hours and one group of guys claimed that they met a man who said he’d been camping outside the store for 36 hours, clearly expecting that there would be an apocalyptic style mass crowd waiting for Kojima, forgetting that we’re British and we que like pros.

Props to this guy for bucking the trend of video game geeks, he’s got a girlfriend and takes an interest in football, unlike these guys….

I guarantee these guys live at home with their mum and are literally dreading the day they finish college and are forced to get a job and enter mainstream society.

Oh come on guy!! At least try and break a few Geek cliché’s instead you had to have an unfashionable haircut and listen to shit German metal bands, I’m so disappointed in you, still your out of shot girlfriend was pretty hot.

Guy on the right: So what magazine is this for?
Me: Vice Magazine
Guy on the right: Oh yeah I know it
Yeah right.

As a fellow geek I understand that no matter how hard you try you just cannot look good in a photo.

This huge carry case full of games belonged to a middle aged ‘fan’ who had been ejected from the que for not having a copy of the new game to get signed, instead he wanted Kojima to sign every MGS game ever made on all platforms, numbering some 10+ disks, he looked really upset as if someone had insinuated his mother was overweight or Solid Snake was gay, there were tears in his eyes!! Curse you HMV.

This is the main reason I came to the signing to witness the very pinnacle of the geek hierarchy, cos-players: basically people who dress up as video game characters and meet up, trade favourite gaming moments and make out (maybe), alas these 3 were the only die-hards wishing to brave the humiliation of passing shoppers, although the guy in the middle still looked way cooler than everyone else in the store.