The Amazon Got Me… Thinking

I just signed up for Amazon.com‘s AmazonConnect, a service that gives authors some space on the Amazon site in which to plug themselves and their wares. This means I now have a page there, plus a plog (a promotional weblog).

I also received a kind letter from Tyler Hill, the AmazonConnect project manager, telling me how happy it made him to see a game designer joining the fold. He’s a gamer himself, and he’d love to have more designers signing up. (That’s an elbow in the ribs to you designers lurking out there.)

Notes like that (and one in recent comments from Tim Kelly) make my day. There’s a large contingent of gamers out there, but we blend into the rest of the world so well it’s impossible to pick each other out unless someone speaks up.

Mike Stackpole has often advocated a logo/symbol/rune/sigil of some sort that gamers could use to identify themselves. Think of the “diver down” stickers you see on the cars of SCUBA fans. The trick is coming up with something that we’d all instantly recognize and be proud to slap on our prized possessions for the public to see.

Mike suggested a chess knight on a hex, but it never seemed to catch fire. Perhaps a d20 would do it, but that leaves out lots of other types of games. It’s hard to collect such a diverse group of hobbies under a single symbol that works intuitively. If anyone out there has a great idea, though, I’d love to hear it.