The PAX 2008 write up

September 10th, 2008 · No Comments

PAXing it up in 2008

So to do PAX 2008 I left the land of snow and went across the water to Seattle for the full three days. This was my first PAX, but not my first convention. I’ve been to quite a few conventions, mostly in my professional capacity, so I knew what to expect. Kind of. It turns out PAX is slightly different than other conventions.

So here’s the condensed version of PAX 2008 for those that have no desire for a long read:

FAILs: Number of people, Sony’s PSP, Line-ups, Food & Drink, Addressing the target audience, People pushing into lines

LOLCats: Nintendo DS, iPhones, Twitter, Demos (Spore), Panels (Wheaton), Enforcers

I had fun at PAX, it was saved for me by a couple of things, which I’ll get to later. First I’m going to run through a few things that IMO PAX is going to have to address. And by a few I mean three things, two of which I’ll kind of roll up together. Take a seat, I’m going to meander.

The biggie is volume; PAX has outgrown its ability to function well over a three day period. Either make PAX longer, which is impractical for so many reasons, or make fewer tickets available for sale. Cutting down the number of people would solve so many of the PAX issues that I encountered. With fewer people, attending the line-ups would be more manageable. Anything with G&T (Gabe and Tycho, as opposed to the nice drink*) featuring in it had big lines: the Q&As for example. The Make-a-Strip line was not even worth attempting, it stretched back to Canada. No really, the back of the line was filled with moose, doing moose stuff for money.

I know that Geeks love to line-up: give them a chance to form a line and BANG you have a room full of patient geeks playing card games or, more likely, using a DS to send crudely drawn genitalia to each other. That seemed to be the predominant image floating around the DS. Geeks seem pretty obsessed with male genitals. My wondrous GF decided to fight back by drawing female genitals and adding the text ‘Actual Size’ to any erect pictures going past on DS Pictochat.

The line-ups, queues to us English, were pretty intense. They existed for everything, aside from the guys washrooms that is**. ATMs, Burritos, Demos and the Panels all had lines that were oversized, like some of those huge drink containers that huge Americans were toting round. Seriously you could have swim in some of those drink containers, though I suspect you’d have had to watch out for sharks.

So a lot of events were impossible to attend if you didn’t want to line-up for two hours plus. It was a shame, I missed out on quite a bit as I just won’t line up that long. Frustratingly the line-up in the main hall was not fully covered by wi-fi, so while queuing my iPhone*** was just used for gaming and not twittering.

So should PAX be scaled down? Not necessarily, the venue and events could stay at the same level, what needs to change is the volume of tickets sold. PAX was way oversold this year leading to the long waits and an over-packed exhibition hall. Reduce the number of people and those problems lessen.

Another issue I had was the age and gender that the exhibitors were aiming at. Gaming is not predominantly 14 year old males anymore. Exhibitors, get with the times! The advertising and booth set-up was really aimed at the past, some even had booth babes present. It was like stepping into a 1996 game convention. I know that G&T do not approve of the booth babe mentality, but I also know they cannot police the booths themselves. The exhibitors need to get it together and realise times have changed.

The people playing games now are older, the most money spent on games is through the 20-35 range and 47% of those people buying games are female. Here are two ways to throw money away in today’s game industry, guaranteed:

1. Aim your product at the 14 year old male demographic. It used to work, now it doesn’t work so well anymore. It’s time to move on
2. Package your product in all pink, regardless of quality and appropriateness, and aim it at ‘girls’

Aside from giving stricter guidance to companies wanting space on the exhibition floor there is not much that G&T can do to address this. PAX did had a few great panels, G&T influenced I wonder, that were aimed at the rising importance and skill level in female gaming. This was great to see and the panels seemed to go down really well. Now if only those thoughts could go a little more mainstream.

The last of my PAX niggles is related to technology. How come PAX is stuck in the 1990’s, and yet it didn’t even exist in the 1990’s? OK, so that is not 100% true and a little unfair of me. PAX is run on a shoestring for charity, so I know why it’s not a technological marvel; cost. G&T need to get an official blogger/writer for PAX 2009. To experience the exhibitions, and the panels, and write them up for the masses online who cannot attend. That’s one free enhancement to PAX as it is now – someone would volunteer to do this, hell I’d do it – it’s a great method of bringing more people into the PAX experience without having to get more bodies through the door. You have volunteer enforcers, G&T, why not volunteer writers?

Oh well, and onto other quick observations. The media and all access passes seemed to be given out at random, you just needed a video camera and you were deemed ‘media’. The enforcers were bending rules for friends a lot and getting them into VIP events. An enforcer who knew me through someone else offered me VIP access, which I politely declined as I didn’t want to attend that particular event, but speaking to others that seemed to happen quite a bit.

Many other methods, such as faster PAX DVD releases and the possibility of webcasting the events live, should be looked at. The bugbear is cost again. You know, although I have these niggles I did enjoy PAX. I’m not sure I’d do the three days again, perhaps just the Saturday in future as that seemed the main day. The energy in the exhibition hall was fun, Starcraft 2 looked a blast. GoW2 didn’t grab me though, looked too similar to GoW1.

Twitter was handy, while it worked, and it made finding events and food much easier. Thanks goes to all those we met in Seattle, here’s to PAX 09.

PAX 2008 by Jackdaw.

Geek Cred: I’m a geek. I was playing games before you, online before you and probably blogging before you. I’m an older geek, OK, not quite as old as Will Wheaton though. Hey, he’s a year older than me, that year means a lot! Ahem.

* Do not drink Gabe or Tycho. You are not the Fruit Fkr and you are not married to them – in all likelihood.

** I was wearing a utilikilt for day two and three of PAX, my first kilt. It’s pretty weird going for a pee and realising you have to lift up your kilt to do it. What a strange feeling doing that at a urinal!

*** I was in iPhone ‘Airplane Mode’ with Wi-Fi turned on. I live in Canada and no way was I paying for 3G data roaming in the USA. I can’t sell another lung …