The overwhelming impression I got from this article was that this is fun. There were lots of shots of happy people in costume. The post game interviews with people with shining faces and big grins, that final montage of people having a really great time to some happy music, and I think the earnest enthusiasm of everyone they interviewed came through (except me, because I was trying to appear as the serious and respectable president and as a result I came across a little deadpan)
Personally, the angle I fear the most is “Crazy People Think They Really Are Spies/Heroes/Mages/Vampires/Whatever”, the one where people go “What’s wrong with you that you’re an adult and still play pretend?” so I was glad we were shown as obviously playing, obviously not taking ourselves deadly seriously. I don’t mind being perceived as someone who spends their weekend playing around and having a great time of it. I’d rather be thought of as silly than crazy 
I actually thought the article thoroughly undermined the “geek” stereotypes. Hamish was spouting his lines about socially dysfunctionally basement dwellers in a good humouredly mocking way - he was clearly including himself in those groups, when the article showed he was in fact an articulate adult with a proper respectable job. I also liked the fact that there was a good gender balance shown as well, “geek” is usually believed to be an exclusively male domain while in Auckland we are lucky to have a good gender balance, and the fact they had several women interviewees I think undermined the perception that a) this kind of stuff is only done by guys and b) that “geeks” wouldn’t know a girl if it bit them. I thought it was a clever angle of presenting the stereotypes, then undermining them, like the clip with Tigger in the tree: him going off about how silly and ridiuclous is all is, while dressed like a tree made of foam. Where what’s being said is contradicted by what is being shown. I also thought that including what people do for a day job was a good move too, and there was such a good variety - student, carer for the elderly, business, teacher, film and TV…a good mix of “normal” jobs.
(I went to such great effort to avoid using the word geek anywhere in my interviews, and the one single instance of it got used. Gah!!)
I liked the fact they showed how much creative and logistical work goes into all this, showing the logistics meeting and the writer’s meeting, which I think gives it a dimension of seriousness, i.e. we don’t just throw on our capes and run around in the park, that our hobby has considerably more creative direction and structure. The discussion of what it takes to write a 70 character theatreform I thought was a great addition.
My Dad saw and came online after to tell me he thought it was good, though he did say he already knew heaps of stuff about larp from listening to me for years, so he wasn’t sure how it would look to complete strangers.
Meanwhile, over on Facebook, people I went to high school with are telling me how cool the article is 
