My last post covered only Friday, which covers only 33.3 (repeating, of course) percent of PAX. So let’s see how the second two days went.
Saturday
Check Yourself
First off, showing up at 10:00AM was a mistake.
The bag check line was kind of crazypants and began to snake around the block. While Kristen and I were okay in our winter jackets, my heart goes out to the skin-exposed cosplayers sitting out there in the freezing winds. The bag checks are a security theater joke, and it’s unfortunate that they were so poorly staffed that the health of attendees was put at risk.
The wait lasted about half an hour, which got us into the building just in time to get seats for the Make-a-Strip panel. I didn’t take any pictures here and the Penny Arcade folks haven’t uploaded the fruits of the day’s labor yet, so I have little to show. But it was 90 minutes of fascinating insight and hilarious storytelling. Mike and Jerry never fail to entertain; the chemistry and charisma they bring almost make the cost of the day’s pass worth it in a single panel. Also Jerry sang a sea shanty and a thousand people cracked their knuckles in unison.
Expo Hall: Black Ice
The developer of Black Ice, Super Duper Games Company, spoke at the Extra Credits panel yesterday. I got to try this game at the Indie Megabooth and was impressed at how well he channelled the hacking visualizations from the early cyperpunk novels. Having a pre-existing fascination with William Gibson, this kind of game is right up my alley. When I found out the game was on sale for $5 and had a working Linux client, I bought a steam key right then and there. I’ve been playing it here and there over past couple of days, and it’s very promising, but still clearly in Early Access.
Spare Panels
The middle of my Saturday contained a pair of panels, which wound up being the only ones I would see that day. The first carried the eyebrow-raising title “The Universality of Video Game Music.” It was run by a few musicians and composers, as well as Larry Oji of OCRemix.org. I was happy to make it to this panel, having missed the actual OC Remix panel the day before.
It was an interesting talk about how under appreciated video game music composers have been lately, and how we rarely know their names. They make a good point, as I can’t think of any I know off the top of my head besides maybe Alex Brandon and Darren Korb.
I then ventured to the Building a Gaming PC Panel, run by representatives from Newegg, Asus, Intel, and Thermaltake, as well as Bob from KMBOD.com. These guys clearly know their stuff about PC building, but I’m not sure I learned anything new. There were so many industry representatives, it was clear they didn’t want to take sides on what hardware is better suited to specific applications. Props for them also not pimping their own brands too aggressively.
After the panel I got a chance to talk to Bob one on one, and asked him about a PC building class I was thinking of running out of Lowell Makes. He was extremely approachable, and it turns out he’s done the exact same thing at a high school. So he definitely thought it was worth trying, and gave me some avenues I could use to find scrap components. I’m very happy I went to this panel and even happier I gathered the guts to stick around and ask questions.
Small World with Fez
Random interactions with strangers can be a boon to any PAX experience. When Kristen offered to teach me how to play Small World, we were approached by a fellow named Fez from Missouri, who asked if he could join us. We had a remarkably fun time watching the clash of flying Halflings and swamp-loving Sorcerers play out. Fez, if you’re out there, you’re a chill dude and it was tons of fun playing with you. Hope to see you next year!
FLOOOOOOOOOOOOR
We missed out on the Angry Video Game Nerd and Cards Against Humanities panels, due to our unwillingness to line up over an hour and a half before time. While it’s a bummer we missed out on the panels, that’s not a worthwhile use of PAX time.
So instead we followed the rest of the crew to the Rock Band Free Play stage. This is an area where faux bands can get into a real line to play real songs on faux instruments in front of a real audience. Well, at this point in the evening “audience” was really more of a gaggle of increasingly fatigued PAXgoers. Dan, Steve, Geoff and Kris took to the stage and queued up Bodies. And that’s when the evening went from good to great.
Nothing could top it. Mostly because the convention closed minutes later at midnight and we had to take the party to the hotel. Similar to the previous night, we rounded out the evening with drinks, board games, and a few debates regarding the finer points of Dragon Ball Z’s story line.
I was told the festivities went long into the night. But I peaced out around 1:00AM. I had somewhere to be the next morning.
Sunday
More Expensive Minute
I arrived at the SBCC around 9:30AM Sunday morning to line up for the Expo Hall. My goal was to get in line for Elite: Dangerous before the line capped out, which I did. They were running setups that looked like this.
That’s a modern space flight sim controlled by a Saitek X52 HOTAS and an Oculus Rift 2. Yes. Very yes.
The bad news was that of the eight demo stations that were running the game, only four had Oculus Rifts. When you got to the front, you got the next available station, by luck of the draw. So I had a 50/50 shot of trying an Oculus. For a half hour wait, I could live with that.
Behind me in the line, there was a ~10 year old kid and his dad. The kid was a combination of very excited and very well spoken. It was uplifting to see somebody so young also be so interested in a neglected game genre that I first got into…well when I was about his age.
When I reached the front of the line, one of the Frontier folks pointed me towards a vacant Oculus
station. I turned to the kid and told him to go ahead and take it. He was confused at first but caught on, and he and his dad thanked me for the gesture. Apparently the woman running the line saw this exchange take place and thought it was “just lovely,” and pulled me out and put me behind another Oculus station so that I’d get it next. Okay, I guess it all worked out in the end.
So how was it?
Life changing. But all too brief. The demo put you up against a single enemy fighter, and I would have taken more time in dispatching it if I had known that its death ended the demo. Overall I probably spent about 2 minutes in the chair getting the explanation from the company rep, and 1 minute actively flying. But it was definitely worth it. I could look behind me and see the entry door to my ship, or look at any of the functional heads-up displays over the cockpit. Coincidentally (or not) my arms were positioned on the flight sticks in the same manner as my in-game avatar’s. There was a moment in the dogfight when the enemy fighter flew over my head, and I raised my head to track it and was able to turn the way it was turning, instead of just instinctively pitching directly up to the last where spot I saw it. You can do this with a head tracking setup, but with the Oculus the sense of immersion was breathtaking.
After I left the booth, I wandered around in a daze, rethinking my priorities in the gaming world. If I wanted to replicate this setup I’d need to drop no less than $500. This might prove to have been the most expensive minute of life. I’ve already bought the game, and I’m looking into DIY head tracking projects.
Goodnight PAX
Despite the fact that I’m only one hour into Sunday, that’s the biggest story I have to write about. Kristen and I went to a Game Quiz panel run by Wikia but it lasted less than half an hour. We played a bunch of Borderlands Pre-Sequel and Borderlands 2, only to determine we liked 2 better. And then I picked up another game of Small World with the fellas, which seems to have convinced most of them to buy the digital version of the game. I may do so as well; platform-independent multiplayer is extremely rare.
Having completed half a decade at PAX, I’m pleased for the most part at the direction this convention is taking. I’m still not sold on the importance of the bag check, the Tabletop area could be a little larger, and the ESL zone can probably be eliminated entirely or moved to a theater. But beyond that, I was able to get a great amount of enjoyment while spending comparatively little time in line. I’ve made new contacts, learned about new upcoming games, gained new insights, and met friends old and new. The allure of PAX is derived from the rare opportunity to have these myriad experiences all in a mere three days, crammed into a building with thousands of like-minded enthusiasts. I hope we can do so for years to come.
Goodnight, PAX East, and see you next year.
-K
