As he related it, Levine was sitting in his car with the Barbarian Invasion expansion in his hands, reading the back of the box, checking out new features. As he was admiring the game, a "pair of dudes" rolled up next to his car and indicated to roll down the window. Levine obliged, at which point one of the dudes said, "Hey loser, what are you looking at, gay porn?"

"And I realize they got this Fabio-looking guy on the cover," said Levine, flashing the box art to crowd laughter.

Rather than issue a cool retort, the 2K Boston designer adopted a nerdy voice, explaining: "No, it's not gay porn, actually it's the expansion pack of the latest Total War."

"All of a sudden I go from being this 40 year old guy coming off this big thing to exactly the same feeling I had when I was 12 years old."

From Atari and D&D to Logan's Run and X-Com, the theme of Levine's address was one of finding peace with your inner-nerd. The former playwright's keynote appropriately consisted of three acts, each chronicling a period of his life and the way that nerd culture changed it.

"When my parents rolled up my character, they didn't get any 18's," he quipped. "They got a couple of 12's maybe: strength, agility, charisma."

Calling comics like Logan's Run and Scarlet Witch his "geeky gateway drug," Levine then moved onto Atari and D&D, and related an experience shared by many in the room: finding other people who like the nerdy things that you do.

"I didn't want to like the shit I liked. I wanted to be somebody else. I wanted to smoke cigarettes and listen to Deep Purple like the kid across the street."

After forming a reliable Dungeons and Dragons group, Levine related the experience of finding new, female faces showing up at the gaming table. Eventually Levine's D&D group fell apart. He moved on to try his hand at screenwriting, and the nerd side of him went un for many years.

Levine's Hollywood career reached a peak when he was picked up to write a romantic comedy. "And then, in what should be a surprise to nobody," he continued, "my romantic comedy turned out to completely suck."

But applying to Looking Glass Studios was a life-changing event for Levine. "I saw guys shouting at eachother in a friendly match of Soul Calibur," he described of the System Shock development studio. "I saw dozens of happy nerds at peace with themselves and eachother.. I had once again found my tribe.

In the end, Levine used his experience to reflect on the fan-fueled Penny Arcade Expo.

"What brings us all together at PAX is we're a giant bunch of fucking nerds," concluded Levine, to which his tribe roared in approval.