PAX Online: The Good, Bad, and Ugly
During PAX Online this year, many people swarmed Steam to eat up all the latest and greatest indies. While it’s always good for more people to get their hands on new and upcoming indie games, the event had some good, bad, and ugly moments that are worth noting. Many great indie games got debut demos, but some cringy ones did too, and most importantly Steam did what it usually does with video content. All in all, PAX Online was a great experience, with a few missteps that could be fixed for the next event.
The Good
1 – Access for All
PAX Online 2020 offered more people had access to the indies than ever before. Anyone with a Steam account had the ability to log into the client and experience PAX Online, assuming they had a stable internet connection and some free hard drive space to download the plethora of demos. PAX Online included game streams, panels, news, gameplay, demos, and much more this year, giving nearly everybody the same access as members in the media. PAX may not be as hype online as it is in person, but being able to include an unlimited amount of people made it more special. A Steam account is free to all, so nearly anyone could’ve joined the festivities.
2 – Updates From Developers, Publishers, etc.
Indie developers weren’t the only ones at PAX Online this year, with Gearbox confirming more DLC for Borderlands 3 during the event, titles from Bandai Namco being looked at, and Wizards of the Coast showing up with a slew of content. The number of bigger developers joining the indies for PAX Online this year was notable, and while it may have caused some lesser-known titles to get lost in the shuffle, it was nice to see a diversity in content at the event.
3 – Familiar Faces
There were many smaller developers at PAX Online this year, from Game Pill inc. and 2Dogs Games Limited to Burgos Games and Zelart. The number of new faces at PAX can be overwhelming at time, but this year there were also familiar faces such as Wizards of the Coast and Gearbox. The inclusion of these bigger industry figures added a grander scale to the schedule and brought more diversity to the PAX Online lineup for 2020. Some familiar faces among the demos included Alien Hominid Invasion, Cris Tales, and Shell Corp to name a few, giving gamers an excuse to rediscover these classic indies.
Click on through to check out the bad…