The San Diego Historical Games Convention (SDHist) is proud to announce Amabel Holland’s video essay “Vonnegut’s Board Game: Preservation, Annotation, Context” as the recipient of the 2025 Bobby Nunes Memorial Award. This award, launched last year in memory of our colleague and friend, Robert “Bobby Factor” Nunes, seeks to recognize exceptional gaming media published in the prior calendar year that reflects Bobby’s enthusiasm for and interest in discussing important cultural issues within the historical gaming hobby. It accompanies SDHist’s Summit Award, presented each year to a game that has broadened the historical gaming hobby.

The winner of the 2025 Bobby Nunes Memorial Award was determined by members of the SDHist board and the SDHist advisory board. (Nominated members were not present for the award selection discussion.) The judges praised Holland’s essay here for its commentary on originality and authorship, as well as its place in Holland’s overall body of work of insightful video essays on games on the Hollandspiele YouTube channel. This particular essay was also on a game (GHQ) that was a nominee for SDHist’s 2025 Summit Award, finishing second behind War Story: Occupied France. Here is Holland’s essay:

Holland’s essay was one of four Bobby Nunes Memorial Award finalists announced this September following a public call for nominations over a period of months. The other finalists were (in alphabetical order) Homo Ludens: Unpacking the Clean Wehrmacht’s Legacy in Wargames – Wargame Ethics (a Fred Serval-hosted Homo Ludens panel on discussions of the German army in World War II, which was the second-place selection here), Philosophy and Board Games: The Categorical Imperative (a Charlie Theel-penned Player Elimination written essay on ethical action and game design), and Space-Cast! #42: The Twilight Cardboard (a podcast hosted by Space-Biff’s Dan Thurot, interviewing designer Pako Gradialle about his Onoda design). The judges had high praise for each of those finalists, and noted how all reflected the concepts that defined Nunes’ work in the gaming hobby. They also praised the three books chosen as honorable mention selections: Mark Herman’s Wargames According To Mark: A Historian’s View of Wargame Design, Rodger B. MacGowan’s The Art of Rodger B. MacGowan, and Maurice Suckling’s Paper Time Machines: Critical Game Design and Historical Board Games.

The Bobby Nunes Memorial Award will return in 2026. A call for public submissions will go out in the spring or summer of 2026. More information can be found on the Summit Award page on the SDHistCon website.