PAX has just wrapped. A few hours ago, we stood in the Washington State Convention Center's largest theatre and cheered on the finalists of the 2008 Omegathon. Now we have scattered to the four winds and the seven seas, and people with more clout than me will be writing and cutting together their reports.

It might take me a while to cover everything, particularly that which requires a bit of in-depth analysis to really get at the core of the experience and what it says about this culture we find ourselves in. I went to some awesome panels, some of which I took pretty hardcore minutes for because everything said was just amazing, amazing, amazing. I met some great people, both of the huge name (Jonathan Coulton!) and face-in-the-crowd variety. Most of all, I learned a lot, had a ton of fun, and have come away filled with the same optimism that keeps drawing me back to this one-of-a-kind medium.

The in-depth reports will follow in a few days. For now, an overview, as well as the pictures I managed to snap.

Day 1

The first day of PAX officially starts at 2 PM, but the line to get in starts at 8 AM. Considering we had an expected attendance of about 50,000 (I'm waiting to hear the official count), I'll let you do the Wisdom check on what an appropriate time to get in line would be. Even with pre-registration, the line is important because 1) priority admission to the Expo Hall and 2) the first 4,000 in line receive a wristband guaranteeing admission to the Friday concert.

I might sound like a huge heretic for this, but #1 didn't interest me so much. The Expo Hall was going to be there all weekend; Jonathan Coulton and the OneUps live on stage was going to happen just once.

Fortunately, a couple hours before the Enforcers were officially meant to hand out wristbands, they decided to hold a challenge (I'll talk about the awesome crowd pacification the Enforcers did a little later) where anyone who would stand up and recite a haiku to the entire queue room would get their wristband early. Well, it's easy to feel safely anonymous in a room full of thousands of people, so I went up and did one. I've lost the piece of paper I scribbled it down on, but I recall it being something like:

I heart Robert Khoo

He is an evil genius

And so, so dreamy

Hey, we got fictitious bonus points for making it relevant.

After my wristband, I just ditched the line entirely. But then after a long time spent hanging out and not having anything to do, I, er, went back. To the end of the line. To kill time.

And then after an eternity the line moved and we started going towards the Expo Hall and I was halfway through the corridors to our big, shiny destination and I went, y'know, I think I'll go to the bathroom instead.

Then, because I still didn't have anything else to do, I went to the Expo Hall.

Inside the Expo Hall

What was it like inside? In a word, carnivalesque. Which Semagic insists is not a word at all, but never mind.

The majors and many of the minors were in attendance. There was also the PAX 10 presentation, a booth of 10 indie games selected for an official showcase. My personal favourite was Audiosurf, a sort of combination Guitar Hero and Rez obstacle racing game where the obstacles are derived from data on your own songs uploaded to the music library. It looks intense and very, very hard. But wonderful.

Anyway, as someone who doesn't place a lot a stock in getting the hands-on for every upcoming game, I was not terribly inclined stand around on my feet for a few more hours waiting to experience public humiliation (my haiku skills are far better than my skill with picking up and playing proficiently a game I've just touched for the first time). Also, I had a panel to get to shortly.

I managed to check out Valkyria Chronicles (just as wonderful as reports have indicated) and a bit of Legendary (freaky, shocking, good) before it was time to pound the linoleum again and head off for my first panel of the con, "Girls and Games: The Growing Role of Women in the Game Industry".

Women in Industry Panel

The panel consisted of Linsey Mudrock (ArenaNet), Marla Huang (Liquid Advertising), and Annie Carlson (Obsidian Entertainment), with Jo Clowes (Microsoft) moderating.

The panel set the tone early for what we'd experience throughout the convention: that one hour is simply not enough time for four people to get much relevant information out and still have time for Q&A. (I'll talk about that a little later-- it's one of my bigger beefs with PAX programming.)

As far as the content, it was mature but a little too circumspect and, as I said, too brief. The choicest bits were the sort of diametrically opposed perspectives that arose between Marla (a casual gamer and relative newcomer, who isn't afraid of being girly) and Annie (an epic hardcore gamer and self-professed tomboy). Marla expressed optimism and acceptance of "girl marketing" and rejoiced in the girl-game casual market, including the wanton abuse of pink; Annie beat that shit down with a sledgehammer at every opportunity. My minutes ended up looking a lot like this:

4:35, Clowes (mod) opens panel

General ubiquity beats down stigmata.

Teaching things as tools- application for what you're learning.

Gender-Inclusive Game Design <-- check it out

Nancy Drew adventure games.

Okay, Annie kicks ass.

My girlycrush only got worse through the Q&A.

Q: Do you find it difficult to work in a male-dominated environment?

Marla: You have to watch your behaviour more than your chauvinistic VP going on his stripper lunches. Yeah, it's tough. But that's a challenge a lot of us girls enjoy, you know?

Annie: Those structures are obsolete-- they're dinosaurs. We don't have to settle for any of that crap.

OMG ANNIE ♥ ♥ ♥

(Obviously, the quotes are paraphrases. Er, and general interpretations of the subtext.)

Friday Night Concert

I ended up giving the "Game Writing" panel a miss because, upon reflection, it seemed unlikely I would get much out of the experience. The one-hour blocks for these panels were going to prevent panelists from covering much more than the basics-- in fact, the girl gamer panel didn't even cover all the basics it needed to.

So I went and had dinner, organised some photos, explored the expo hall a little more, then went and lined up for the concert.

Even getting to the queue room maybe two hours before the concert, the line was already horrendously long. I took my place and stood around until they finally shuffled us in, under the impression there would be chairs.

Oh, there were chairs-- at the back. Screw that, I thought, and screw my feet too: I wormed my way through the crowd (hard to do when you're my size) and wound up in the front row on left side. Most excellent.

I have plenty of photos from the event... which someone, later, insisted I should not have gotten, as photography was forbidden at the event. Really? I mean, I was standing right next to what I guessed was an official PAX photojournalist, and I was in clear sight of at least half a dozen Enforcers, but was not cornered or given the stinkeye once. If I'd been asked to stop photographing, I totally would have. I'd even have deleted the photos taken of the bands, if so requested... but no-one did, so I'm calling these fair game.

There were three acts for the Friday night concert: The OneUps, who do jazz rearrangements of game scores; Freezepop, who were excellent at working the crowd but really overstayed their welcome... and Jonathan Coulton. Need I say more?

Above: Jon pawns "Still Alive" duty off onto Felicia Day.

During each act, there would eventually come a slow song that prompted people to bring out the nearest glowing object to hand to wave around. This was funny if a little half-hearted for the OneUps, and a little exhausted and squeezed of its value by Coulton, but Freezepop, for whatever else you could say for them, ruled the idea and made it epic.

That is the light of a fraction of the hundreds and hundreds of PSPs, GBAs, DSes, cell phones and laptops held aloft in a gentle, breezy wave in the middle of the Friday night concert. Freezepop actually got the lights manager to shut off the house lights for proper effect.

It was beautiful.

After that, there was certainly the option to stick around one of the freeplay rooms till 3 A.M., which I chose not to indulge in. What can I say: I had a games-and-pedagogy panel to go to in the morning. Also, my feet felt like they were going to break off.

Day 2

Humping it back up to the convention in the morning was a drag, but not making it to some of the day's awesome panels would surely be worse, so I cringed and started walking.

Games and Kids Panel

The first order of the day was the pedagogical panel, "Game Developer Parents: Raising Our Kids on Games". Present were Jason Coleman (Big Huge Games), Amy Jo Kim (ShuffleBrain), Jen MacLean (38 Studios), Dave Rohrl (Zynga Game Network) and Brian Robbins (Fuel Industries, moderator).

The discussion was interesting, though still suffering under time constraints like yesterday's girl gaming panel. To its credit, however, everyone on the panel tackled a specific point, many of which emerged in the course of my own game audience paper.

Some of the more interesting ideas brought to the fore, in my opinion:

1. Dave Rohrl posed that even solitary games can build social skills, for the following reasons:
   
   • They become a point of discussion between people.
   • They build analytical and language skill.
   • They bolster self-esteem by letting the player accomplish and achieve things.
2. Ellen Beeman --who totally validated my experience with games as a storytelling/mentoring activity-- argued that one topic not sufficiently explored in available literature was how games teach individuals problem solving with real-world applications. (Her illustration that most of the room knew how to defeat an army of zombies but not more plausible scenarios was very apt.)
3. Jen MacLean made an impression on me by being keenly aware that, even with parental enforcement, children will probably play the games they shouldn't be playing, at a friend's house or through some other method. She maintained that keeping an open dialogue was far more important than any sort of cut-and-dry prohibition.
4. Jen also suggested that MMOs can be a way for family to stay connected over long distances-- and also a way to engage children to share their lives and feelings without coming off confrontational. I don't know if I'd feel comfortable gaming with my mom or dad, no matter how savvy they happened to be, and I definitely would be suspicious of any sort of post-raid heart-to-heart about my grades, but I've seen other families use games quite well as a means of communication.

What was brought up repeatedly in the Q&A was the fact that we are now entering into a generation of parents who have been exposed to games their entire lives. All I know is that I have some parents on my flist who are going to raise up mighty fine gamers.

It was a very good panel, all in all. After it, I hit the Expo Hall again to take a peek at the LittleBigPlanet demo and then had some lunch. I caught sight of the notorious Fruit Fucker cosplayer, but around then my camera phone's battery died, so you are blessedly spared those particular photos.

Handheld Lounges

Every time I passed by these, I fell in love with PAX all over again. The name rings true: it's all about peace. And love. And coexistence. The atmosphere here is so relaxed and playful. And the sumos looked so comfy, I didn't dare sit in one, for fear I'd never want to get up.

Game Criticism Panel

I. LOVED. THIS. PANEL. Every minute of it. These were my BOYS (and my girl). They-sa speakin' my language.

The panel consisted of Chris Kohler (Wired), Gus Mastrapa (The Onion), Karen Chu (PlayFirst) and Patrick Klepek (MTV). They covered a WIDE range of topics, impressive under the tight constraints of that one-hour time limit.

Chris is the sort of character with amazing personal presence and charisma, not to mention the sort of calibre of thinking you'd expect out of a publication like Wired. Gus was the quintessential artist-freelancer, full of strong, independent opinions and a respectful lack of modesty. Karen and Patrick made less of an impression, largely because they didn't get as much mic time, but Karen hit the ball out of the park with her remarks on critical aggregate sites. I'll discuss this panel in greater detail in another post.

Destructoid Panel

The title of the panel was "How to Make the World Notice Your Video Game Blog", which honestly should have indicated to me that things were going to be tongue-in-cheek at best and sadistic at worst. It was somewhere in between. The panelists --all Destructoid writers primarily or once upon a time-- offered some earnest advice amidst a bunch of 4chan humour. I took away some good ideas, but the best part was meeting Sean (who showed me to his amazing site, of course!).

Following this panel, I did one last circuit of the Expo Hall, got stuck behind an idiot at the Infinite Undiscovery cabinet and decided I didn't want to play a second-rate JRPG that badly, and went back to the hotel. Yes, I missed MC Frontalot. Yes, I'm a heretic. Shh.

Day 3

I got to the con a minute too late to attend the art and design panel (the guy JUST before me was the last one they admitted), so I went and hung around the Console Freeplay rooms for a while, played some very good rolls in Katamari Damacy, and watched some Rock Band performances.

Then I joined the line for the gamer-developer divide panel... very well in advance, of course. This con is officially too big for its britches.

The I'm-Ken-Levine's-Friend Panel

The specific title of the panel was "You Don't Know What You Really Want: Why Game Players Don't Understand What They Really Like About Video Games", and it was hosted entirely by Andrew Mayer.

Despite the hard tone I'm taking with the title of this section, Andrew had some good points... it was just very generalised and mostly full of very basic wisdoms. Or maybe I just think they're basic, because they're the same ones that come up in reader feedback a lot.

• A player plays a game. A gamer is passionate about games as a mentality.
• Designing games will teach you way more about games than playing them.
• Even if a tester's suggestions are totally stupid, their reaction indicates that something is up.
• Nothing is more important than good design.
• Frustration is good.
• You don't have to beat a game to like it.

It was refreshing to hear a frank industrial perspective like this. The lolcats bolstered his argument in ways that Destructoid's lolcats didn't.

And that pretty much leads us right into getting in line for the final round of the Omegathon, which I will cover soon. Very soon. I have just one word for you: puppets.

(More con photos in my Flickr album.)