Mike Peterson

Hi, all. I’m about as geeky as they come. My role-playing journey began when I was five, after my dad introduced me to the basic idea of Dungeons & Dragons. I liked it right away, but got properly hooked a few years later.

In primary school, I met a group of like-minded friends. We spent whole weekends in Central Park with all our props, playing campaigns that ran for years. I was always the mage. The spell mechanics were far more intense than anything else at the table.

At college, I started organizing our gaming community and helped dungeon masters build lore for their small groups at our events. At least 60 kids joined us each month for one-off adventures. That’s when I realized the community was great fun, but Dungeons & Dragons was too complex for most newcomers.

So I added fast board games and card games to our events. They caught on like a forest fire in gale force winds. We split the hall in two and got sponsors to run trials of new card games, trivia, and some heavier board games. I took players’ feedback to local shops so they could adjust their stock orders.

Before long, I was creating game night events of my own. I recruited a few friends across the county to run several events at once. We reached hundreds of people and brought in sponsorship deals. That’s when I decided to quit my day job.

I later partnered with Comic Con and became a kind of gateway for everyday fans becoming part-time or full-time geeks. Watching that happen is beautiful. BoardGameMovie.com is my way of offering that same welcome online.