Lackluster Adventures of the Mildly Insane

Monday, September 15, 2008

When There Just Isn't Time to Open Two Jars....

Thursday, September 4, 2008

PAX +48

Here I sit in the Seattle airport waiting for my flight back to good ole, well I guess regular ole….OK fine twatvomit riddled New Jersey. It was just over 2 days ago that thousands stood and watched the colossal Vs Excitebike match that offered one fame, fortune and a trip to Tokyo while guaranteed “a life time of shame” to the other. It was not just a life altering moment for the winner but for many others, they will never view hand puppets the same, I know I won’t.

So final thoughts on PAX?? HOLY SHIT!!! Only real way to describe it is phephuckinnominal. I used to attend E3 back in the pre-Nuke days (yea GG on that one dicks) and as good as I thought it was, PAX takes the pie by far. Hell, post-Nuke E3 doesn’t even deserve to wipe PAX’s ass with is bare hand (from what I understand they have offered too). To be honest I was a little skeptical on day one. I had preconceived notions of grandeur from my E3 days of multiple sprawling gainormous exhibit halls, domineering booths that had so many pretty flashing lights it would send an epileptic into a seven year fit and a subterranean den that housed the oddest, most exotic shit you could think of. But at PAX, after the herd of gamers had been wrangled into the main exhibit hall and I had made my first round to start mapping out the next 3 days of my life was I left with “….ummm where’s the beef?!?!”. OH I found the beef pretty damn pronto. The “beef” wasn’t in the walls, or the booths or even the games but in the attendees themselves. PAX has showed me that E3 was mostly smoke and mirrors since it was a “trade show” only and had very little real substance underneath. They did their best to look all pretty for the camera but that’s about it. With PAX it’s about creating an environment for the gaming culture whether it’s video, table top or card. I even saw a couple guys playing a make-shift game of marbles with what looked like little fuzzy pom-poms that must have been handed out with the pipe-cleaners (Enforcers were handing out handfuls of pipe-cleaner kits to help keep people amused in line, and to be honest it’s amazing what some bored geeks will come up with given the simplest of tools. I could have spent a whole day just wondering around getting pictures of pipe-cleaner creations).

I have been poking around the interwebs reading some of the media’s coverage and opinions on this year’s event. For the most part it’s been overwhelmingly positive, but there were two criticisms’ I’ve seen on more than one site was. First it appears as PAX is getting too big for its britches and there were some growing pains in the form of extensive lines. Personally I didn’t see that as a problem as you had all the information you needed to plan out where you needed to be to see what you wanted and they even scheduled when and where lines would form. Yes, there was so much to see and multiple panels going on at the same time that sometimes you had to prioritize your day…I know fate worse than death. If you ask me, the bigger the better and they are looking to split up the show regionally. 2010 they will introduce East Coast PAX to be held in Boston, I know eff’n Boston. The second complaint I didn’t really see coming…the name. Really?? Apparently there are some people in the industry that have issue with the Penny Arcade guys and whatever they are attached to so the name of Penny Arcade Expo is being perceived as a road block for a chunk of the industry. Well the clear solution here it to just to tell all those guys to “eff off”. I’m pretty sure if they can’t take a joke, or your name is Jack Thompson, no one really wants you there anyway. Gabe and Tycho built this following and sub-culture. They are the ones that weathered difficult times to keep providing us with laughter and entertainment. They are the ones that laid the path that allows PAX to be what it is today. To think of taking that away from them because some d-bags in the industry “don’t like them” is ludicrous.

PAX was quite the experience for me. I got to meet a whole slew of people I never would have gotten a chance to and play “fly on the wall” to a lot of the inner workings of the industry most don’t get to see. It was a real eye opening opportunity and downright inspiring at times.

Thank you to thank Gabe and Tycho, their staff and all the volunteers that put PAX on for all of us to enjoy. Thank you to all the people I met and spent time with for being so hospitable of the developer wanna-be. And thank you to all the people that attended PAX that truly make it the special place it is.

For now I patiently await PAX ‘09

Monday, September 1, 2008

Day 3 : The Good, The Bad and the Puppet Orgy....

Once again we got early entrance to the show. Two thumbs up for the crew I was traveling with for actually pushing through the exhaustion and getting up and going on time. I was tooling around fiddling with my BB not paying much attention to my surroundings when I happen to look up and see what can only be described as “WTF!?!?!” Apparently some rivalry had been sparked between the Behemoth (makers of Castle Crashers)booth and the Pink Godzilla booth which climaxed in what appeared to be a violent assault with a pink toilet paper scatter gun, or a couple of bored mascots armed with pink toilet paper, as evident from the video left on display in a neighboring booth. There are pics below.

After I had my fill of the Hello Kitty version of the Behemoth both, I was able to snag a spot on an open Starcraft II kiosk. This game looks great plane and simple. I didn’t get a terrible amount of play time but from what I saw, it maintains the solid play from the original that we all know and love. Basically it’s Starcraft in a prom dress. I hear they have added new units that are designed to add to the game play and strategies. I think I just didn’t have enough time to get to those fancy pancy new toys. I have made the decision to put a solid effort into sucking slightly less at this game when it finally releases than I have sucked at all other RTS’s in existence. I’m sure I’ll still suck and get destroyed by 8 year olds….dicks.

By the time I left the Starcraft II demo, the doors had officially opened and a substantial crowd had swarmed the area as this was obviously one of the top draws on the floor. From there it was more Lock’s Quest pimping in the morning line up for “The Family Feud” event. By the time that line was moving to the point of uselessness for us it was time for some food. We ended up at the Moby’s Restaurant in the convention center itself. I have to hand out the Worst Marketing award to Moby’s. This joint was EMPTY and not due to it being a bad place….no one knew about it. It is quite a feat when a restaurant is surrounded by 60,000ish hungry people LOOKING for food and none of them know you exist. It was good food and good fast service at a very reasonable price. Well Moby, your phailure was our win….take that 8 year old dicks!!

On our way back from lunch, we were treated to Will Wheaton receiving a personal note from Dark Horse himself the only way one could receive a note from Dark Horse…..musically. I’m not sure who planned it but I think it was a group of the enforcers that got together and organized it on their own. Either way it was very entertaining.

With our organs no longer trying to digest themselves, I opted to not attend the second Q&A panel that was Sunday morning to try and take advantage of the fact that everyone else would be there and hope for a lighter exhibition hall. This tactic worked out pretty well and I got to spend some quality non-mobolicious time in the PAX 10 area checking out all the games in more detail. They are all great games that I would recommend checking out. I will not go into detail on them but I have listed them with links so you can check them out on your own time. They are all done by independent developers of varying degrees. It was good to see such an emphasis on the indie community in a time when we as gamers are seeing more and more cookie cutter projects by the big studios just because someone’s histogram in their excel spreadsheet at a board meeting told them that a Lord of Sponge Bob’s Caribbean Pirate Cock Ring game would make an ass-ton of money.

The Amazing Brain Train

Time went pretty quick checking out the PAX 10 area and before we knew it we had to head over to the very large line forming for Round 6 of Omegathon for our final opportunity to pimp out Lock’s Quest. Omegathon is a weekend long game tournament between 20 randomly selected people who pre-registered. The thing about Omegathon is the games can be anything. Just to give you an idea, in the past they have ranged from Pong to Jenga to Halo 3. Round 6 of Omegathon is played in the main theater and usually draws all remaining attendees as a crowd. Filling the theater with that many people can take a bit of time but they were kind enough to keep us occupied with 96’s Best of Prom soundtrack which conveniently led right into the Synchronized Fallout Boy hand puppet dancing and not so surprisingly morphed into the Synchronized Fallout Boy hand puppet orgy in record time….it doesn’t take much to entertain several thousand geeks with hand puppets. I tried to get some pics of it but none of them came out well and to be honest they just would not have captured the disturbing nature of what was going on.

Once everyone was filed in and all the Fallout Boy puppets had been defiled, Gabe and Tycho took the stage, introduced the final two Omeganaut’s and unveiled 1987’s Vs. Excite Bike on the Famicom Disk System as the final round challenge. This was quiet the shocker especially since the game was never released in the US. One guy wins and he gets to go to Tokyo Game Show and wins a shit-ton of cash…. congratufuckalations him.

Sad with the reality that PAX was really over and relieved with the prospect of getting off our feet in a futile attempt to regain feeling in our legs, we hit the exhibition floor one more time during the break down of the show to sort out all our belongings and move on to the night’s activities.

We had dinner plans with a good selection of developers and press later in the night so in the mean time we ended up at Adam Sesslar’s birthday party which happed to be at the same restaurant where we needed to kill time. It was a good chance to meet some more people in the industry and mix and mingle with people way over my head. We did get a chance to talk to Adam a bit and he was very cool about it. 100% non-dick. Kudos goes out to him for treating a little peon like I with some respect and not like a little peon. I truly am a fan of the show so thanks for all the laughs over the years (if for whatever reason Adam Sessler would be reading this).I probably should also point out that Adam was wrecked out of his gourd so that may have played into his “up-beat” attitude, but either way well played sir. Morgan Webb was in attendance as well but she seemed rather preoccupied with other company and I didn’t want to be the over bearing freaky fan and push my way in. She was hot as usual.

We said our goodbyes and best B-day wishes to the Sess and moved on to dinner. It was a large group of guys from Game Developer magazine and later joined by the Behemoth crew. Good food, good drinks and good laughs made for an all around good night.

Day 3 Pics

Unfortunately the batteries in my camera (the shitty camera) died on me about 4-5 pics in so I had to rely on on my BB from that point on. Oddly enough the BB seemed to do a better job with some of the "action" shots that had any amount of movement....GG camera.

The Castle Crasher's booth that was violated the night prior.

Vault 101 Trailer and family from the Fallout 3 booth.

Art for Wrath of the Lich King

Final shots from Round 6 of the Omegathon

Sunday, August 31, 2008

Day 2 Run Down

Day 2 started off VERY strong with my friend and me both getting Exhibitor badges. For those of you unaware of these events, the exhibitor badges basically let you go anywhere and can at times can get you ahead of line. This also aided in us getting in before the show opened up. As we expected the show floor was infinitely better without the standard crowd to wade through. It also made getting pics of things much easier…assuming I didn’t suck at getting pics. OH well shit happens and you move on. Early entry also got us first in “line” for playable Little Big Planet. HOLY SHIT!!! This game looks mind blowing and from what I got to play is stupid fun. I am beyond excited for this game cannot wait for it to come out.

We bummed around the PAX 10 booth area a bit (I hope to really spend some time there today playing all the games in there) then decided to get some breakfast. Breakfast took much longer than I was expecting but I will have to admit they were some damn good pancakes. By the time breakfast was done we split up a bit and my friend and I hit up the Make A Strip panel line to try and distribute some more downloadable demos of Lock’s Quest (we actually do a fair amount of this throughout the show and it’s how we got the Exhibitor’s Badges….and by “we” I mean more Steve and I help where I can). Using one of our contacts, we got in and scored excellent seats for the Make A Strip panel which was not only just as entertaining as the Q&A but was also incredibly interesting to watch a strip go through the motions of creation.

The Make A Strip led right into the Fallout 3 demo. A full hour of the beginning of the game!!! This game looks amazing and the depth of detail that has gone in to it is extremely impressive. Yet another game I whole heartedly look forward to getting and playing through, probably multiple times. I would have to say the best part of the demo was the demonstration of the Psychotic Prankster achievement. Any of you who plan to get this game must check it out. (Sorry no pics from this demo but the Enforcers were confiscating people’s devices who were trying to get pics/video against the Bethesda’s wishes)

After the Fallout 3 demo we pimped Lock’s Quest some more in some other lines then I ended up sitting in line for a VERY long time to get Gabe and Tycho autographs. Very long wait but very worth it. The other highlight of that line wait was entertaining everyone else in line around me with GoW on my PSP kicking my ass hardcore. In my defense I am playing through on God Mode, so eff you all!!!

We met back up and killed a bit of time before grabbing some carpet space at the PAX 10 panel. It was basically an hour of Q&A with a bunch of successful indie game developers. Very insightful and inspiring to many. The panel was made up of a wide array of indie devs spanning from the successful college project to the guys who quite their job throwing caution to the wind, balls to the walls make or break. Best answer of the night goes out to Ryan from Grubby Games. When asked how to best keep your motivation up when working solo on a project and running into difficult hurdles through your dev process… “Have you lost all your money? Try losing all your money.”

Once the PAX 10 panel was finished, we completed our night with a lengthy dinner with a bunch of the PAX 10 guys from various projects. Our party ended up large enough we needed to split up. It was great to talk to these guys and hear their opinions and insights to the industry as insiders. By the time we finally headed out we were all rather beat but it was a good end to a good day. The only regret was we didn’t have any gas left in the tank to catch the late night show of the Mini Bosses which I hear is a good show. Maybe next time.

Day 2 Pics

After getting home and finally going through some of the pics I got before the show opened and during the Make A Strip panel, I realized two things... A) My camera apparently blows and B) There were more unusable pictures that I had hoped for. For the ones that didn’t come out very well I’ll try to get more of them when we get there early today. Here is what seemed to come out OK.

Dungeon Runners receives best tag line so far.