PAX 2006 Recap

Above and beyond the announcement of their videogame last Friday, PAX apparently passed pleasantly for the PA fans who made it to Bellvue, WA this past weekend. Various news organs have a look at what transpired. eToyChest has a journal of each day, with firsthand accounts and lots of pictures. Gamasutra covers the Penny Arcade Scholarship announced at the event; $10k towards an education to get yourself into the games industry. Kotaku was there to liveblog the keynote, while Joystiq covers the making a comic panel. For wrap-up, we have an IGN report, and the ever exhaustive 1up minisite for everything you'd want to know.

Ok I Admit

[neonprimetime]

I didn't read the article(s), but that is because there were 7 frickin' links!

Don't you love it when people can get along though!

Not only was it a celebration of the popular webcomic, which enjoys its rep of mercilessly skewering the gaming industry, but it also marked a convergence of interests: table-top gamers standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Nintendo fans hoping against hope that the Wii would be playable in some dark corner of the exhibition hall.

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[stoolpigeon]

i'm hoping some dotters who made it will post their own pics, links, etc.

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[RiotNrrd]

Here ya go! [revver.com]

It's small but it is about 30 mins after the doors opened. Please ignore the stuff in my teeth. I'll try to upload some more later.

For pics, I got three:

Tycho and Gabe [flickr.com]
One half of one of the LAN rooms at PAX [flickr.com]
Me + Frag Dolls [flickr.com]

The entire con was a blast. Jerry and Mike were EXTREMELY polite. They got mobbed everywhere that they went and they did everything that they could to try to spend a few minutes speaking with as many people as possible. The Enforcers were incredibly cool and ve

cool

[stoolpigeon]

i would love to have gone - and i'm not even really much of a gamer. these guys do such a good job of giving more context to the whole scene that it helps solidify it as a culture. the comic presents this life that i'll never get to live but can dream about. just hanging out, playing games and in general not worrying about reality. (and i'm not saying i want that life-- i think the reality would not be the dream, but that's the point of most escapism i think)

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[Lovedumplingx]

Amen. Who has time for that type of lifestyle outside of college. But going still would have been a lot of fun.

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[twistedsymphony]

I was pissed, I have family in Bellvue, I could have walked to the convention center from there, but I had a big project at work that I had to get completed so I missed out.. maybe next year...

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[kv9]

Amen. Who has time for that type of lifestyle outside of college. But going still would have been a lot of fun.

going away for a weekend... yeah, that's fucking crazy! $DEITY forbid you should take a little vacation from time to time and not feel guilty about it.

Panel!

[Rob T Firefly]

while Joystiq covers the making a comic panel.

After only two or three more cons, attendees will have made enough panels to make a full strip!

Pax 2006

[HeWhoRoams]

I was in attendence this year, it was a blast. You felt out of place if you didn't have a DS however, so friday night I got one from the local bestbuy. That place was a barren wasteland. Empty shelves, depleted stock, I got 1 of the 2 last DS's they had. The Tabletop room at the Red Lion was great, and it definitly benefitted from having it's own location. The smell... was not as bad as I was lead to believe, but not flowers by any means. Lots of free swag, demo's, contests, and raffles. Bawl's was everywhere... til they sold out, but Sno-bawl's was excellent! I took a few pictures, but haven't had a chance to digitize them and upload yet. Next year's bigger location in Seattle should make it an even bigger and more enjoyable event, and I highly recommend that video game inclined persons make it out at least once

Half a decade?

[Guysmiley777]

Ok, I think PAX sounds like awesome fun, wish could have made it. All of the articles really make the event seem like a really great thing. But one quote from one of the multitude of articles stuck in my craw a little.

As a journalist it's very easy to get jaded, and after more than half a decade of writing about games professionally

More than half of a whole decade!? I guess it sounds much longer than "5 years" somehow? Honestly, someone is taking themselves a little too seriously.

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[cowscows]

I don't know. I really don't mean to crap on video game journalists, but as much as I enjoy video games, I don't think that I'd find spending five years writing about them particularly satisfying.

Turning a hobby into a job is a pretty good way to turn it into something you don't enjoy very much. And while playing video games can be fun, it's not the most productive thing in the world. I guess my point is, in the grand scheme of things, how much does this guy's job really matter? Maybe he feels that it's mor

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[twistedsymphony]

I can't imagine being a video game journalist is anywhere near as bad as spending the same amount of time as a faceless cube hermit at generic software company... I don't care HOW long you've been doing it.

Also the fact that you assume someone who makes a career out of a hobby ruins the hobby because work = sucks leads me to believe you've never had a job doing something you loved. As someone who used to work doing something I loved, for years in-fact, I can tell you that yes I did have my days where I

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[cowscows]

Well, I've never worked at a software company, but I have heard plenty of horror stories about the corporate world sucking the life out of people. So maybe those jobs suck too. I guess if you assume that for some people, work is just going to completely suck regardless, doing something like writing about video games is a relatively bearable version of suck.

Also, I guess I didn't properly explain what I was trying to say about the hobby thing. The point I was trying to get across is along the lines of, just

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[jchenx]

Not all hobbies are created equal. One of my hobbies when I was younger was drawing buildings. And now I'm an architect, and for the most part, I'm quite happy. Like you, there are plenty of days in which I'm tempted to just stay home, but when I'm working on an interesting building, the thought of it one day existing as steel and concrete and being inhabited by dozens/hundreds/thousands of people is pretty damn motivating to me. At the end of the week, I can look back, and see something coming into existan

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[cowscows]

You could say that, but I wouldn't. Making games is different, because well, you're making something. I love games, and I appreciate the effort that goes into them. Entertainment is a legit human need, and I don't think entertainers or artists or game designers/programmers/whatever are necessarily wasting time.

I also think that journalism, in general, is an important and admirable profession. It's just that there are some topics that really, in the grand scheme of things, don't matter enough to be fulfillin

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[jchenx]

Even though the speed at which software development happens nowadays means that games are pretty quickly obsolete, everything builds on what came before it, so you're at least involved in a creative and continuing process. But I don't think video game journalism adds much to the equation. I'm sure some people who are involved in it would beg to differ, but I just don't see them having much impact on the industry which they owe their existance to. They're just sort of there.

I definately think they're having

It's cool to see two people...

[casualsax3]

... take something like gaming and really turn it into something better - between this and ChildsPlay, it's nice to have these guys around.

BTW, does anyone actually have a link to the mentioned strip?

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[L-Train8]

The article erroneously says it was Monday's strip. Gabe and Tycho made several strips in advanced, so they wouldn't have to work on comics while PAX was going on. Monday's strip was the last of those premades. The strip created at PAX will be up tomorrow. The link will be http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/08/30 [penny-arcade.com]

Better Blog than the one's posted:

[ghaltmann]

http://www.gamehelper.com/pax06/index.html [gamehelper.com] has videos of not only gabe tycho and Khoo but of Gabe and tycho's WIVES... because we know you want to see that. Also there's an interesting video of the PAX line. I thought it was better. I also created it.

No Love For Sony

[L-Train8]

There was no love for Sony at the PAX this year. At the first Penny Arcade panel, an audience member took the mike and asked the crowd who had a DS. Over half the 2000 or so people in the room cheered or held up their actual DS. He then asked how many had PSP's, and the cheer was pretty small, maybe 1/4 or 1/5 of the DS response.

Minutes later, Gabe was asked what he thought about the PlayStation 3. He replied, "We won't be getting one at launch. It (the price) is ridiculous, and they need to know it's ridiculous." He added, "The future of gaming is the Wii-60," meaning, I guess, a combination of the XBox 360 and the Wii.

Microsoft and Nintendo also both had big booths (although Nintendo was only showing DS games, nothing for the Wii), but Sony didn't show up. It helps that both Microsoft and Nintendo have their headquarters a short 5 minutes from the venue, but there was zero Sony presence.

The Wizard!

[PSXer]

What, nobody mentions the real reason to go to PAX, The Wizard [imdb.com]? Unfortunately, the audience participation this year and last were nowhere near as good as it was in '04. Hell, back in 04 I skipped a chance to play Halo 2 to see The Wizard. It was so worth it.

The panels, tournaments (I'm not that good) and freeplay rooms were good, I suppose, but just hanging out with a DS was awesome. There were so many DSes being used, in fact, that it was hard to play without getting a connection error even if you were rig

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[ShadowsHawk]

Seems like there wasn't a single item that you really enjoyed about PAX. Why did you go again?

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[PSXer]

Because I'm not psychic and didn't know that I wouldn't like it as much this year as I did previous years, duh.

Actually, both PA panels were awesome (as well as the one where they showed us how they make the cartoons and we gave out suggestions for today's strip) Also, Beat the Pros, where you get to watch random guys who were standing in like take on pros at Soul Calibur III and Halo 2 was pretty fun to watch. They also showed a guy who got over 3 million points in geometry wars before he purpousfully died