The San Diego Historical Games Convention (SDHist) is proud to announce the finalists for the 2024 Bobby Nunes Memorial Award. This award, launched this year in memory of our colleague and friend, Robert “Bobby Factor” Nunes (seen above during a 2021 game of Combat Commander: Mediterranean), seeks to recognize exceptional gaming media published in the prior calendar year. This media should reflect Bobby’s enthusiasm for and interest in discussing important cultural issues within the historical gaming hobby.
After solicitation of nominations from the public and the board of advisors, the SDHist board met to determine four finalists. They’re listed below in alphabetical order:
Amabel Holland’s video essays: Holland, a designer (Doubt Is Our Product, This Guilty Land, Supply Lines of the American Revolution, and more) and publisher (through Hollandspiele), has created a number of intriguing video essays on YouTube challenging commonly-held ideas in gaming. One of those essays, on if games need victory conditions, is below:
The Beyond Solitaire podcast: Liz Davidson’s YouTube show/podcast is now in its ninth season. Her 2023 interviews (in seasons six and seven) covered a wide range of historical gaming topics and discussion, from the representation of race and sexual orientation in games, to approaches to game journalism, to conversations around specific games. One particular interview, with Maurice Suckling on his scholarly work, his designs, and post-colonialism in games, is below:
Space-Biff: Dan Thurot’s site remains one of the foremost destinations for board game reviews (in the historical space and beyond), as well as insightful essays on different topics in the hobby. One of those 2023 essays in particular, on AI art in games, can be found here:
We Intend To Move On Your Works: This ongoing series is a spinoff of Fred Serval’s Homo Ludens podcast and YouTube channel, featuring Stuart Ellis-Gorman and Pierre Vagneur-Jones discussing American Civil War games with the host (either Serval or Alexandre Fontaine-Rousseau). Each episode sees Ellis-Gorman and Vagneur-Jones discussing a specific title they’d recently played, from game mechanics and effectiveness as a game to depictions of the history involved and the connections (or lack thereof) to the Lost Cause narrative. (More on the project can be found in this SDHistCon Second Front interview and in this Conflicts of Interest Online written piece from Ellis-Gorman on the project so far.) One particular 2023 episode, on the Battle of Shiloh game Into The Woods with a detailed discussion of the flags and symbology chosen, can be found here.
The SDHistCon board and board of advisors will soon meet to determine the winner of this inaugural Bobby Nunes Memorial Award. The winner will be announced at Conflicts of Interest Online and on our social media platforms (X, Bluesky, Instagram) before the end of the year.