PAX 2008: The People

PAX is dead. Long live PAX.

For me personally, PAX actually wasn't as fun as last year. It was still very good, but last year was more valuable to me because I'd forgotten how good spending time with gamers was. And even though I went in expecting a lot from my fellow gamers this year, the people of PAX did not disappoint.

The Gamers
Astayonix and Electric Turtle's Pre-PAX dinner was an event I was happy to attend (and help clean up after). I wish Chris Taylor had speechified less so that he, the BioWare folks, and the Valve folks could have all held court separately.

Atlus Parker did a fine job of running the Harry Potter themed "Triwizard Drinking Tournament". Drunk nerds high fiving passersby, chanting, and singing are generally quite fun. I might have had more fun at the Shorty's and IRC gatherings, but I was glad to help wrangle the wizards.

Breakfast with Mr. T and B:L (These are forum handles, obviously) was also very pleasant, and I regretted being unable to catch up with Mr. T for console freeplay later in the show. I did get to play EDF 2017 (a co-op third person shooter with a fifties kind of vibe and lots of buildings to knock down) with Gerard from Cambridge, England who I had never seen before and will likely never see again. He was nice.

HotSake was very friendly and invited me to play Mechaton (LEGO wargaming) with him, redhalo, PeasantDave, and a couple other guys I don't remember. He also coordinated some epic win by surprising Felicia Day with a letter from Bad Horse (from Dr. Horrible). She was apparently so tickled she asked them to autograph the letter for her. I reiterate: epic win.

These are only the gamers from day zero (Pre PAX) and day one. And I even skipped some people. (Hey Anngaricus. :)

Piles of random PAX pics. (WARNING: Some alcohol abuse depicted.)

The Press
Walking in on the first day, I got to walk next to Shawn Elliot from 1UP. I asked if he was going to the 1UP panel. No. The Dawn of War panel. Maybe. Then I was going to tell him I was interested to see Left 4 Dead, but realized he'd already played it on PC, so what did he care? In the end, I was kind of sorry for the press at PAX. It's a party for us. But they're expected to write articles to justify their plane fare. Yikes.

Since Ryan O'Donnell was injured and unable to attend PAX, David Ellis was kind enough to pass on my Blaster Master buttons to him. Yay David Ellis!

The Industry Folk
I didn't have much interaction with the industry folk at the show. A guy at the Sony booth was saying how they didn't have Little Big Planet bags at the moment. I was waiting in the Little Big Planet line next to a huge pile of the bags, so I grabbed a dozen and took them over. The guy saying that was gone, but apparently some other Sony people who saw me do it told him about it, and he sought me out in the line to give me a Resistance 2 shirt. That's pretty classy.

On the way home I got to sit next to an artist for the Command and Conquer series. He told me that the delays for Tiberium were the normal "it's not done yet" delays. Good job EA for not releasing an unfun game. Here's hoping the extra time and money the company is putting in can make the difference.

I also got to sit next to a PR rep for a pile of different MMOs. I don't much care for MMOs. And he confirmed that for someone into action games like myself, there really aren't any MMOs out there. That guy travels like crazy: China, Korea, the US; Europe. He talked about how trying to move Chinese MMOs to the US and vice versa isn't working at all. He talked about how Chinese culture makes free to play much more viable there. (I couldn't quite hear his explanation, though. It had something to do with how they view heroism.) Anyway, I probably should have taken notes. He knows a lot.

All in all, there were tons of awesome people to meet and talk to at PAX. Now, on to the lesser elements of the show.