PAX!

So I was able to go to PAX on Saturday. I'm sad to say it was actually the first convention I had ever been to. I've had the opportunity to go to many cons throughout the years and I always declined to go. I had such a good time though, I don't think I'll ever miss another.

One of the highlights was getting to see a live demo of Aliens CM. The speaker was some big shot from one of the studios, and he was either a good liar, or was actually genuinely excited about this game. He spoke of how accepting Fox was of allowing them to continue the story and build upon the canon. The new species they showed was some sort of Crusher alien, with an impenetrable head. They handed out shirts with an image of a pulse rifle and the phrase 'Peace through superior firepower" on them. Unfortunately their choices were L or XL and I am a wee boy of 5'5 and 110 lbs so the shirt goes to my knees and I do not think I'll be wearing it.

Had I known how much time would be spent waiting in line I would have gotten a 3 day pass instead of just the one day. It was a good 40 minute wait to play Battlefield 3, and about the same for Bioshock Infinite. We skipped Borderlands 2 and Skyrim, because at each point we saw the lines, they were far beyond their "From this point in line the wait is 2 hours" mark. We saw a preview of Prey 2 at Bethesda, which looks fucking legit.

I did get to play about 10 minutes of The Old Republic. I have to say I was not impressed. Part of it was because I didn't have time to fully customize my character, and also because it was just a generic 'save the Padawan' mission. I got no sense of story and very little of character. The graphics, while good, would not be enough alone for me to buy the game. I finished playing just in time to snap a picture of 3po as he was walking by.


I attended two panels while I was there. The first was "How to make your own videogame website and win at Life" and had the creators of Destructoid and Screw Attack. Again, I was not impressed. While it was very interesting listening to just how fucking hard it is to run something like that against competition like IGN, there was a lot of... nonsense and tomfoolery. They wandered off topic frequently, and would stop to tell anecdotes. They did talk about the proper way one should structure your leadership, the differences between certain ad companies, and the utter necessity of Google analytics. I felt the overall motto was "Work hard, you'll get nothing for it save for the satisfaction of having your own gaming website."

The other panel I attended was "Flying a Pride Flag" about 'gaymers' in the gaming community. The speaker was a gay game developer who had worked on the gayest game ever, Disney Princess Adventure or some shit. The main point of concern was the constant use of homophobic slurs in multiplayer gaming, but also, homosexual characters in videogames, and why gaming is frowned upon in the gay community. He admittedly told us that he was no sociologist, and though he had conducted a survey asking participants about their thoughts on these matters, it had over 63 questions on it. He handed it out to 100 applicants, the majority of whom were his co-workers and friends.

He didn't have a majority of the data finished because there just wasn't time to compile it all. The data he did have was so skewed toward extremes it was useless. He mainly made assumptions about what he felt on the matters. He did parallel the birth of the gay rights movement and the birth of the videogame, which was interesting, and also noted study that showed a high percentage of gamers with some kind of functional autism or aspergers syndrome. I hadn't thought about it, but it's certainly true in my experience.

But like I said, I had a blast!