For any recurring extravagant event, there exists the risk of becoming repetitive. Old hat. Eventually the spectacle and novelty fade away, and such an occasion has to stand on its merits. Such as it is for PAX East, the three days out of the year when the collective gaming community comes to my backyard one hell of a get-together.
I’ve been to every PAX East since it started in 2010. So this year I wanted to approach it differently. Fewer panels, to reduce time spent in lines. More time in the Expo Hall to talk to devs and get more details on upcoming games and technology. And much more time in the tabletop area, to explore the recent explosion in board game enthusiasm.
You can find my musings on PAX East 2013 somewhere on this very blog. For some reason (laziness) I never did post about 2014. But enough about the past! Instead, let’s talk about the past! The past weekend, that is. Because that was PAX East 2015. I’ll start with my breakdown of Friday.
“You have a cyber womb…”
The panel on 3D printing might have been more interesting if I hadn’t spent the past year slowly steeping in the maker movement. I learned a little bit more about the FormLabs 3D printer, and about Nervous Systems and their strange procedurally generated creations. But I’m not sure if I’m going to get much mileage out of this newfound information.
I would have liked a more detailed breakdown of CAD and slicer software, or good avenues to find free or pay-for 3D models. I mean, you either have to take somebody else’s data or design something yourself to make a 3D print. They didn’t even mention 3dhubs!
The good news? This panel was packed. The room was almost filled up with hundreds of people are interested in 3D printing. This bodes very very well for the future of makerspaces everywhere. This is an exciting time indeed.
Extraterrestrial Gas Boxes
Alienware was demonstrating modern games running on some small form factor Steam Machines, complete with a Steam Controller. It was the latter I was really interested in, as it is poised to be one of the first innovations in input technology since the popularization of motion control. I wanted to see firsthand what this trackball-emulating touchpad could do. The demo stations were playing Dying Light, a zombie survival FPS that I’m not terribly interested in. I would have rather seen an RTS, to really be convinced that I could play a wider variety of PC titles on this device.
The trackpad took a lot of getting used to, and I’m apprehensive about its ability to replace a mouse (or even an analog stick) in an FPS. Perhaps the sensitivity would need to be adjusted but I only had 6 minutes to play with so I didn’t attempt to mess around. I found small movements having too little effect, and getting used to flicking the “trackball” to take advantage of its simulated inertia was difficult. Also it has buttons on the bottoms of the handles, which I’d never experienced. I suppose this is to replace the ability to push down on twin analog sticks?
Overall, the Steam Controller seems difficult to use. I’d have to really spend some time getting used to it to play a traditional console game. How it will fare with other genres is still a mystery. But the small form factor console seemed perfectly capable of handling a modern shooter. I have high hopes for SteamOS (and gaming on Linux in general) once these hit the market.
A Classic Letdown
I swung by the Classic Arcade room, always one of my favorites at previous PAX iterations. (post edit: Here’s a picture of the PAX East 2014 Classic Arcade area from the ACAM website). Something was… different this time.
The fuck is this? There’s one line of machines along the back wall, but most of them were pinball machines, Street Fighter games, and one Mortal Kombat. None of the retro classics were represented. Gone are the multiple rows of classic cabinets. No Food Fight, no Galaga, no Missile Command, no Dragon’s Lair auto-playing in the background. What’s going on here?!
After a bit of inspection, I found out that the American Classic Arcade Museum did not set up the arcade room this time around. This year, Screwattack and some company called Arcade4Home put it together. Well, I don’t know why this came to pass, but I don’t approve. Bring back ACAM for 2016, guys. These are our gaming roots, here! Leave it to the pros.
Stompy LASER Robots in Space
I stopped by the Catalyst Game Labs booth in the Tabletop merchants area. Randall Bills, one of the creative minds behind BattleTech, was there. But multiple attempts to engage him in conversation were met with pretty short responses. Oh well.
I bought a hard and digital copy of the Alpha Strike rule book and got to talking with another different CGL employee (alas I forget to get a name) about the fact that I still haven’t had a chance to play a tabletop BT game to due difficulty of finding interested friends. Turns out he runs a monthly out of Boston at a game store adjacent to BU’s campus that I never knew about despite living there for four years. I might just stop on by!
I’d like to get on my soap box for a moment. I think Catalyst has done a poor job of reaching out to potential BattleTech players. I have consumed MechWarrior content for most of the time I’ve been alive, but have not played a single tabletop BattleTech game. Catalyst is sitting on a franchise with decades of history, a richly developed universe, and one of the most prolific video game series in existence. But they’re still selling books with aging art and outdated (and frankly rather ugly) miniatures, with no digital version of the game available besides Megamek, a fan-made Java program that I could not figure out for the life of me.
Tabletop gaming is bigger than its ever been right now. Take a look at this picture of the Tabletop area at PAX this year.
Look at all those fucking people. They’re all playing board games. Get on reddit facebook and pimp local events. Put out a crowdfunding campaign, get some cash for better art and better casts. Work with PGI to share in the success of MechWarrior: Online (use their amazing ‘mech models and concept art for starters). Start reaching out to players like me who are struggling to take part. Don’t just sell rulebooks, build a community.
Okay. Coming down now.
Bonus Points
The Extra Credits panel was Friday afternoon, right on top of the UT2k4 tournament into which I was considering throwing my hat. I went with the panel instead. I’m glad I did, but for an unexpected reason. The panel itself wasn’t super exciting. It was all Q&A, and although I could listen to James Portnow speak ad infinitum and still be enthralled, I can’t think of anything that jumped out at me in particular about games or game development during the panel.
But, before the panel started, a young lady behind me started chatting about being an instructor at Game-U in Columbus, OH, doing introductory Unity3D classes. Seeing as I’m trying to learn Unity myself, this was very relevant to my interests. I didn’t even know programs like Game-U existed. This was all very enlightening and may have provided me a new avenue for my ongoing experimentation with game development.
It’s these little serendipitous moments that make PAX so unique. Unexpected conversations with random strangers that open new doors.
Free as in Freedom
I spent the remainder of Friday night playing all manner of games with my cohorts. Matt, Mike and I hit up the PC Free Play area for a rousing game of DotA 2. And by “rousing” I mean we struggled with a lackluster teammate for 30 minutes until our time ran out and we had to abandon the match. Still though, the ability to look somebody in the eye and tell them “nice job” is an opportunity we don’t get in our internet-fueled social gaming. I missed the chance to offer consolatory neck rubs after team wipes. Coulda shoulda woulda.
We then proceeded to the Console Free Play area to meet up with Dan. The four of us checked out a copy of Halo Master Chief Edition. We then spent the next 15 minutes trying and ultimately failing to get the X-Box One to sync all four controllers, recognize that we wanted a local game, and get all four us in. At the end of it all, only three of us were in the match. We dawdled around for 10 more minutes while Matt played with his DS, rather than trying to go through that mess again. Good news is that now we know to steer clear of the X-Box One if you ever intend to have a console that supports this kind of “couch” play. You fucked it up, Microsoft. You fucked it up.
We ended the night linking up with the entire crew, throwing Martian Dice and playing Flux in the Seaport Hotel over snacks and spirits. So many friends, otherwise scattered across New England, all in one place having a grand time. We ended the day on the kind of note that remains unique to PAX.
But there are two whole days of PAX left to cover! Stay tuned for my next update for how the actual weekend itself played out. TEASER: There’s a mosh pit involved, and I go to outer space.
Until then… PRAISE THE SUN.
-K