Gen Con means Hoosier home for geeks

Prize pigs. Super bikes. Dungeons and Dragons. Welcome to Indianapolis in August.

I grew up on the east side of Indianapolis before moving to Bloomington. Most of my 22 years have been spent in a city that constantly tries to prove it has any national relevance.

It’s hard to find any cultural belonging as a suburbanite in the Circle City.

Am I a Hoosier farm boy with traditional folk values reflected at the Indiana State Fair? Do I live for the smell of gasoline and big-city racing at the MotoGP? I’m neither. I’m a geek.

What about Hoosiers like me, people who aren’t fond of loud noises or who constantly fight hay fever? The pale teenagers who spend more time watching sci-fi movies than mowing the lawn. For us, there’s Gen Con.

Geneva Convention is the third wheel of Indianapolis culture that should no longer be denied.

It’s the longest-running gaming convention in the world. More than 36,000 people attended last year. This four-day annual event has lasted 45 years. It can’t and shouldn’t be ignored.

We’ve moved from our parents’ basements into the same convention center that hosted Super Bowl XLVI.

Nerd culture has widened to include any variants of role-playing games, cel-shaded art or public costume demonstrations, otherwise known as cosplay. Still, we’re those weirdos you see invading Indianapolis every August.

We’re not really invading, though. We’re your neighbors.

Through annals of tabletop gaming and endless fan fictions based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft, Gen Con provides a home for the culturally homeless in the Midwest.

Sure, I worship Pacers great Reggie Miller, and I know which United States president was born in Indiana. But Gen Con provides a home for the modern Hoosier who grew up somewhere in the cornfields shadowed by the heights of Lucas Oil Stadium.

Oh, how I long for my Indiana home.