People aren’t kidding when they say one day just isn’t enough. It really isn’t. Not even close. When it comes to the Penny Arcade Expo, an entire week would hardly provide time to scratch the surface of everything being offered; and the convention is only a short three days long. Having done my fair share of research and planning prior, I had an idea of what to expect going in, but when you’ve never been to a gaming convention – or any convention for that matter – the sheer scope of the entire event sort of blows you away. We’re talking multitudes of exhibitions, booths, panels, presentations, meet-ups, tournaments, concerts, after parties and other stuff in every direction you look, from about every game publisher, developer, agency and press outlet you can think of in the industry…and all of it is submerged into thousands of die hard gamers just dying to get a little taste. In fact, each year during the three days of the event, the entire downtown area of Boston and every hotel, restaurant and bar within one mile radius is overrun with packs of geeks and gamers from all over. So yeah, it’s kind of a lot to take in for a newbie PAX’er, and to be blunt, it was freaking awesome.
Since it was my first time, I thought I’d share with you my impressions of PAX East during my visit, and what stood out to me the most during my very brief, yet enjoyable experience. I only attended the first day of the event (I know, it’s a travesty), so I can only offer a small glimpse of the great beast that is PAX, but I hope it’s enough for you get a mental picture of what I was seeing, and what you can look forward to if you decide to make the trip yourself.
First off, the hotel I stayed at had entire floors devoted to gamers staying for the convention, and shuttles were provided to transport us to and from the exhibition center, which was really convenient for someone like me who’d rather avoid expensive cabs or driving in hectic Boston traffic. When we arrived at the expo early in that morning, we were greeted with massive lines of people waiting to get in. Fortunately, this isn’t the event organizers first time at the rodeo, so once the lines started moving, we got in fairly quickly. Even before you get to the show floors, there are tons of displays, cosplayers and merchandisers in the main lobby to keep you occupied while you wait for the expo to open. Big screen TVs lined the ceiling showcasing the days events, large statues like the mechanical Firefall display filled the halls, and they handed out very helpful guide books to everyone at registration to make navigating PAX a lot easier. Suffice it to say, there was an energy in the air that was electric. Everyone was anxious to get started.
Since I was press, I got onto the show floor at the same time as the rest of the media, an hour before the main contingency. I was pretty amazed by the size of it, with dozens and dozens of booths littered across the center. My plan was to visit Bethesda first, because I wanted to get a look at Elder Scrolls Online before the lines got crazy. Alas, it was not to be. When I arrived at their booth, they weren’t quite ready for us yet. So I headed over to Deep Silver instead, checking out a couple of the indie games at the Indie Megabooth – like The Swapper, Awesomenauts and Outlast – along the way. I didn’t get enough time with each of them to write previews, but I really liked what I saw; especially Outlast since I’m a sucker for survival-horror games. At Deep Silver, I got a bit of hands-on with Metro: Last Light while some other press chatted away with Dmitry Glukhovsky, the author of the novel Metro 2033 that both video games were derived from. I played the original Metro 2033 on PC, so I was really impressed with the improvements in the look and environment. It seems a lot more focused on action this time around, but the stealth aspects are still present and the AI has definitely seen some major adjustments. While I only played it for about 15 minutes, it was pretty surreal to be among the press and developers who make this industry what it is. I also fooled around a bit with Deus Ex: HR Director’s Cut for Wii U and Sacred Citadel for the Xbox 360.
I left the show floor after that to join my wife and brother who made the trip with me, and re-entered with them through the main queue. Talk about massive lines. I just have to say, if there’s one thing PAX East has a lot of…it’s lines! Anything worth seeing has a line as far as the eye can see, but that’s just prime (or is it East?), because it gives you opportunities to socialize with cool, relatable people who have the same interests as you. I think the social aspect and the connections you make at PAX are definitely a big part of what’s so fun, and for people like me who come from very small cities with a very limited gaming community, this was a great chance to meet other gamers and mingle.
After that we walked the show floor for a while soaking in the atmosphere, taking part in some of the hardware booths, like MSI, PowerA and Nvidia, to see what gadgets and rigs they had. At some point I played an eight person Rise of the Triad battle with my brother and 6 others and took second place…my bro took first and won a t-shirt. Bastard. Along the way we took a ton of pictures. You can see some of them in our PAX East Cosplay article, as well as in this one. I saw quite a few familiar faces among the crowd too, like Greg Miller and Casey Lynch from IGN, and Ken Levine from Irrational Games. I saw others too, but you basically get the picture.
I actually found myself back at the Deep Silver booth fairly early in the day. This time I got to play some Dead Island: Riptide with my brother and two other attendees, headsets and microphones included. I’ll by writing a preview on Riptide so I’ll save the details for later, but from what I saw it’s very similar to the first game. I played through the original game with my brother, so we’ve both been looking forward to the sequel for awhile. After we finished up, we took some pictures with the bloody, limbless zombie statue and moved on. I also dropped by Klei Entertainment’s booth for a little Don’t Starve action, and I also had a ton of fun with the Contrast demo by Compulsion Games. Look for impression pieces for both these games soon.
I should note that while we were checking out all this stuff, we were picking up a ton of swag as well; which was especially fun for my wife who took it upon herself to collect every button she saw (even a couple expo exclusive ones). We got Minecraft plushies, Plants vs. Zombies hats, a ton of T-Shirts, inflatable toys and some downloadable DLC codes, among other things. The PAX community is a generous one and we reaped the benefits.
At some point we joined a sixteen-player Dust 514 match, where we battled eight vs. eight and came out on top. I stuck with a heavy anti-infantry class most of the round, mowing down players with my chain gun while avoiding grenades and keeping under cover, which landed me in third place overall (Not bad!) I’ve seen previews of Dust 514 in the past, and how it ties in to EVE Online‘s massive economy. I didn’t really see much of how they were connected since the demo was only about 15 minutes, but I did notice that another part of the booth had a speaker explaining how our match was effecting the economy in real time. I can’t wait to play this game, especially since it’s free-to-play on the PS3.
At this point we got hungry and ate in the food court, since we didn’t want to waste our one and only day looking for restaurants. The prices were a little expensive to be honest, but the food was pretty good. I give the Steak Bomb sub two thumbs up. Right next to the food court is the tabletop freeplay area where all the board games and card games were being played, as well as vendors for all the popular brands. The usual Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons booths were present, but as I’m not the most knowledgeable tabletop guy, I was pretty surprised with all the games I’ve never seen before. My brother actually introduced me to a popular card game called Munchkin, and convinced me to buy a set. Now I’m an addict because the game is really fun and easy to learn. I saw more then a few people playing it, and there was even a tournament for it Saturday (next year I will be champion).
Speaking of the tabletop freeplay area, one of my only disappointments was not having time to participate in any of the game competitions. PAX East reserves areas for consoles, PCs, tabletop games and handhelds, and even holds tournaments for a variety of games in each. It would have have been great to get in on some of that Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tourny action, or even take a break to enjoy some retro console games. I missed out on a lot of great panels too, given by industry bigwigs and other important speakers on a lot of different subjects related to games and all that surrounds them. That’s just the way it goes with massive events like this…you have to plan and choose ahead of time to get the most out of it. Like I said before, one day just isn’t enough time to get the full expo experience.
Eventually we made our way back to the show floor and considered waiting in line for games like Watch Dogs and Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. Unfortunately, by then the hour was getting late, and the show floor closed at 6pm. So with limited time we decided to wait in line at the Bethesda booth to get a peek at Elder Scrolls Online. Probably the only choice I kind of regretted. Games like this have massive lines, and while we had some really entertaining conversations with other people and the exhibitors while we waited, fifteen minutes of gameplay with an MMO wasn’t worth the two and a half hour wait time. I can say that the game was graphically impressive though, with only a bit of framerate lag and very Skyrim looking environments. As far as the controls and interfaces were concerned though, it seemed a lot like the usual MMO structure we’ve become used to in games like World of Warcraft. You could choose between three alliances: the Daggerfall Covenant, the Ebonheart Pact or the Aldmeri Dominion, with three races to pick from under each. The demo was very limited, so they requested that we use a preset character build to get into the action. We spent most of our time running around in a group of five players, getting a feel for the combat and the controls; but again, fifteen minutes wasn’t nearly enough time to get a good understanding of a game of this magnitude. I do have high hopes though as I’m a huge fan of the Elder Scrolls series.
Before the show floor closed I played a little bit of Space Team at the Megabooth, and observed some of the games and live commentary being done at the Twitch booth. We also bought some merchandise on the way out. There’s a ton of stuff for sale all around the convention like plushies, retro games, clothing, toys, figurines and more, so getting some much needed souvenirs for ourselves and the kids was no problem.
All in all, The Penny Arcade Expo (PAX East) was a heck of a lot of fun, and the amount of work and effort that goes into this immense event is obviously very great; a convention created for gamers, by gamers. I think for a first excursion into unknown territory, we came out pretty successful. I would have loved to get a closer look at the Indie Megabooth, as well as some of the bigger titles like Saints Row IV; not to mention all the other great exhibits we probably didn’t even know existed, but the trip to Boston was totally worth it. The city is a beautiful place to visit with a ton of great attractions outside of PAX. And the after parties and other venues we visited in the evening were really entertaining. The entire trip was the complete package, and I’d definitely recommend anyone who loves games and wants to immerse themselves deeper into the gaming community to give it a try. There is something for every kind of gamer and enthusiast, and more then enough to satisfy the casual as well. Hope to see you there in 2014!
