Finalists revealed in debut Bobby Nunes Memorial Award, celebrating exceptional media coverage of historical gaming cultural issues
A new award recognising historical gaming’s most exceptional culture writers, podcasters and video essay makers has unveiled its four debut finalists.
The Bobby Nunes Memorial Award was launched this year in memory of the eponymous Robert “Bobby Factor” Nunes – a hugely popular figure in historical gaming circles who was central to the recent growth of the San Diego Historical Games Convention – who died of cancer in March.
SDHistCon founder Harold Buchanan, the designer of games including Liberty or Death: The American Insurrection, said the award aimed to reflect Nunes’ enthusiasm for and interest in discussing important cultural issues within the historical gaming hobby.
The award is a welcome addition to a board game industry which, understandably, largely sees its awards focused on celebrating outstanding game designs, designers and successful publishers.
The work of writers and audiovisual creators – many of whom are producing perceptive, considered investigations of the culture in and around game design – is currently very poorly recognised, with the Diana Jones Award the only real major prize to acknowledge excellence outside of design work or general game popularity.
The inaugural Bobby Nunes award finalists include board game designer and Hollandspiele co-founder Amabel Holland, nominated for her string of YouTube video essays challenging commonly-held ideas in gaming, and board game writer and reviewer Dan Thurot, whose site Space-Biff shines out as a bastion of thoughtful insight and commentary about the deeper nature, workings and cultural positioning of tabletop game designs.
Liz Davidson, a former academic-turned full-time solo developer at Root and Arcs publisher Leder Games, has also been nominated for her long-running YouTube show and podcast Beyond Solitaire.
The Bobby Nunes award committee highlighted Davidson’s coverage of a wide range of historical gaming topics and discussion in the past year, from the representation of race and sexual orientation in games, to approaches to game journalism and conversations around specific games.
The final nominee is We Intend To Move On Your Works, a spinoff of A Gest of Robin Hood designer Fred Serval’s Homo Ludens podcast and YouTube channel.
The series sees Serval, Stuart Ellis-Gorman and Pierre Vagneur-Jones discuss American Civil War games, covering game mechanics and titles’ effectiveness as a game, depictions of the history involved and the connections (or lack of) to the Lost Cause narrative – which attempts to claim that the Confederacy’s cause was just and heroic rather than centered on slavery.
The winner is set to be announced before the end of the year.
An extensive tribute to Nunes, written by Buchanan, can be read on the SDHistCon website.
