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