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Matt Conn (born 1987 in San Francisco, California) is the founder and former CEO of MidBoss. He is known for the creation of GaymerX, the cyberpunk story adventure game Read Only Memories , and producing the LGBTQ video game documentary Gaming In Color . [1]
He is also a founding member at BandPage, [2] which was acquired by YouTube in 2016 [3] and for winning the Travel Channel television program America's Worst Driver . [4]
On March 26, 2018, Conn stepped down from the board of GaymerX and as CEO of MidBoss after allegations of sexual misconduct, underpaying workers, and workplace harassment. [5]
GaymerX (initially GaymerCon) was founded in February 2012 and launched its Kickstarter on August 1, 2012 [6] with a goal of $25,000. It hit its goal within five days [7] and ended up raising just over $91,000. The first convention was held on August 3 and 4, 2013 in San Francisco, California. [8] The launch was covered by sites such as Examiner and GamePolitics.com. [9]
Throughout the fundraising campaign, organizers added new support levels, in addition to existing support levels that included admission to the event and voice acting from Ellen McLain. [10] At a session during the convention, McLain took part as assistant on a marriage proposal to help an attendee propose to his boyfriend by voicing a version of the song "Still Alive" with reworked lyrics.
GaymerX2 was held at the InterContinental Hotel on July 11–13, 2014 in downtown San Francisco. It featured celebrities like former WWE performer Fred Rosser (Darren Young) and sponsors like Indiecade, Ubisoft, Riot Games, and 2K Games.
GaymerX ran from 2013 until 2017 and has held events in San Francisco, San Jose, and New York City. It also inspired a spin-off event, GX Australia, in Sydney, Australia.
2064: Read Only Memories is a cyberpunk adventure game for the PC, Mac, Playstation 4, Playstation Vita, Xbox One and Linux. It was successfully funded on Kickstarter for $64,378 on December 12, 2013. [11] [12]
On this series, which aired in mid-2010, Conn was penalized for being the worst driver in San Francisco by having his car destroyed by construction equipment. [13] In the finale, Conn was named the winner of the program, and had a car representing him destroyed by Robosaurus. [14]
Patricia Oren Kearney Cadigan is a British-American science fiction author, whose work is most often identified with the cyberpunk movement. Her novels and short stories often explore the relationship between the human mind and technology. Her debut novel, Mindplayers, was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award in 1988.
Steve Jackson Games (SJGames) is a game company, founded in 1980 by Steve Jackson, that creates and publishes role-playing, board, and card games, and the gaming magazine Pyramid.
David Oliver Sacks is an entrepreneur, author and investor in internet technology firms. He serves as the general partner of Craft Ventures, a venture capital fund he co-founded in late 2017. Additionally, he is also a cohost of the All In podcast, alongside Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis & David Friedberg. Previously, Sacks was the COO and product leader of PayPal, and founder and CEO of Yammer. In 2016, he became interim CEO of Zenefits for 10 months. In 2017, Sacks co-founded Craft Ventures, an early-stage venture fund. His angel investments include Facebook, Uber, SpaceX, Palantir Technologies, and Airbnb.
Michael Alyn Pondsmith is an American roleplaying, board, and video game designer. He is best known for founding the publisher R. Talsorian Games in 1982, where he developed a majority of the company's role-playing game lines. Pondsmith is the author of several RPG lines, including Mekton (1984), Cyberpunk (1988) and Castle Falkenstein (1994). He also contributed to the Forgotten Realms and Oriental Adventures lines of the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, worked in various capacities on video games, and authored or co-created several board games. Pondsmith also worked as an instructor at the DigiPen Institute of Technology.
Gaymer and gay gamer are umbrella terms used to refer to the group of people who are identified as homosexual and have an active interest in video games or tabletop games, also known as gamers. Lesbian, bisexual, and transgender gamers are often categorized under this term.
America's Worst Driver is an American reality television program on Travel Channel, based on the television series Britain's Worst Driver and Canada's Worst Driver, part of the Worst Driver television franchise. Hosted by Alonzo Bodden and Jill Simonian, contestants from eight different cities compete to not be named the worst driver in their respective cities, because the contestants who are named the worst driver in their city has their car destroyed, while everyone else wins prizes ranging from free oil changes to a trip for two to Florida. All contestants are enrolled in a Driver's Education class in their respective cities regardless of what happens in the series. In the two-part finale, the eight worst drivers meet up in Los Angeles to show who is the most improved, with each driver winning a new car, while the driver who hasn't improved is named America's Worst Driver. Matt Conn of San Francisco was named as such and had a car representing him torn apart by Robosaurus.
Peter Connelly is a British video game composer and sound designer known for his work on the action-adventure Tomb Raider series. He has been part of several video game releases working mainly with Core Design, Eutechnyx and Ubisoft.
Japanese cyberpunk refers to cyberpunk fiction produced in Japan. There are two distinct subgenres of Japanese cyberpunk: live-action Japanese cyberpunk films, and cyberpunk manga and anime works.
Homestuck is an Internet fiction webcomic series created by American author and artist Andrew Hussie. The fourth and best-known of Hussie's four MS Paint Adventures, it originally ran from April 13, 2009 to April 13, 2016. Though normally described as a webcomic, and partly constituted by a series of single panel pages, Homestuck also relied heavily on Flash animations and instant message logs to convey its story, along with occasional use of browser games.
Ellen McLain is an American voice actress. She is best known for providing the voice of GLaDOS, the primary antagonist of the Portal video game series, the Combine Overwatch AI in Half-Life 2, and the Administrator, the announcer in Team Fortress 2. Her voice roles also include the Jaeger A.I. in Pacific Rim and The Witch in Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2.
Broken Age is a point-and-click adventure video game developed and published by Double Fine. Broken Age was game director Tim Schafer's first return to the genre since 1998's Grim Fandango, and was released for Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, and Xbox One platforms. The game was developed in two acts; the first was released on January 28, 2014, and the second was released on April 28, 2015. A retail version of the complete game for Windows, macOS, and Linux, published by Nordic Games, was released on April 28, 2015. A Nintendo Switch version was released on September 13, 2018.
Video game development has typically been funded by large publishing companies or are alternatively paid for mostly by the developers themselves as independent titles. Other funding may come from government incentives or from private funding.
GaymerX is an American public-benefit nonprofit corporation based in California dedicated to celebrating and supporting LGBTQ+ people and culture in the world of gaming, with a focus on video games. GaymerX puts on a fan-facing convention with LGBT-oriented gaming and geek culture, or gaymer, with panels primarily focused on LGBT issues and debates in the gaming industry.
Karl Roelofs is an American video game developer known for creating the MacVenture game Shadowgate. He is a co-founder of the video game development company Zojoi, LLC with Dave Marsh.
MidBoss is an American video game and media production company that was founded by members of the GaymerX team as they expanded beyond GaymerX into other ventures, specifically Gaming in Color and 2064: Read Only Memories.
2064: Read Only Memories is a cyberpunk adventure game developed by MidBoss. It was directed by John "JJSignal" James, written by Valerie Amelia Thompson and Philip Jones, and features an original soundtrack by 2 Mello.
Gaming In Color is a documentary film by MidBoss about queer people in gaming. Directed by Philip Jones, Gaming In Color focuses on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) issues in video games, gaymer culture and events, and the rise of queer themes in gaming. The film is largely interview based, and features notable gay gaming personalities in the industry and communities.
Nevermind is a first-person horror video game developed by Flying Mollusk. It was released for Microsoft Windows and OS X in 2015, and for Xbox One in 2017. The story revolves around the minds of people who have suppressed memories of horrible events.