Fun male fashion tips for the top five geek conventions

If there’s a part of pop culture that greatly impresses you, inspires your dreams and is the subject of your daydreams, there’s probably a convention somewhere that would be very happy if you visited. It doesn’t matter what inspires you – comics, video games, action heroes or anything else – you can take your inspiration and express it in a way that both inspires your fellow convention attendees and lets you have fun.

If you’ve never been to a pop-culture convention, you probably have a few questions regarding your first attendance. A huge part of the fun of these gatherings is to go in an imaginative costume that has everyone taking your picture. Most people, though, simply wear regular clothes. It could be a fun style hack to simply wear makeup that makes you look like your favorite cartoon or gaming character. Other than that, comfortable clothes and shoes will get you a long way. Here’s an introduction to five of the most popular pop-culture conventions out there today, and what you can expect when you go.

The PAX Prime gamers’ convention

The Penny Arcade, the world’s longest-running webcomic, deals with the gaming lifestyle and has a vast following. However, the Penny Arcade expo isn’t about the characters in the comic; rather, it is a celebration of the lifestyle and culture that gamers love. Thousands go to see panels by industry insiders, concerts by musicians popular with gamers, LAN parties, equipment previews and the Omegathon competition. If you can go to a convention near you, you should pick a costume that will help you skip the lines. At the 2014 PAX Prime convention, anyone who came dressed up as XCOM Thin Man got to jump some queues.

The San Diego Comic-Con

While comic conventions are everywhere, the San Diego Comic-Con is the world’s biggest and the best. Being in Hollywood’s backyard, it gets a great deal of interest from the big production houses as well. If you love comics in general, or a comic in particular, this is the place to be. If you’re going to pick a costume, though, you’ll need to up your game – the costumes that enthusiasts wear to Comic-Con tend to be so spectacular, imaginative and over the top, you might mistake them for the real thing. If you’re lucky, you’ll even see Hollywood stars arrive in costumes.

GoPlay Northwest

As wonderful as computer games are, people still have a nostalgic attachment to the tabletop games of their childhood. If you love board games, card games, story games and role-play games, you’ll feel right at home at the GoPlay convention in Seattle. You can use your imagination and really stand out dressed up as anything from a pack of cards to a hairy monster.

IndieCade

Some of the biggest games in existence today started out as tiny, one-man operations at conventions like IndieCade. This one is the top convention for enthusiasts who like to design games just as much as they like to play them. If you have an interest in becoming a game developer yourself, you should absolutely be at IndieCade. The dress code here isn’t about wearing elaborate costumes, though. To appear a part of the developer crowd, you need to pick the casual look.

DexCon 15

The yearly DexCon gaming convention in New Jersey is the place to go for world-level gaming championships. It has dozens of them for every gaming genre and is highly regarded. Considering that this is a hard-core gaming convention, though, you need to be sure that you go dressed in the gamer’s uniform — baseball cap, T-shirt, and shorts or jeans.

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Photo: Jere Keys