PAX 2010

This year I finally went to the Penny Arcade Expo! It’s essentially a gigantic gaming convention organized by the people behind Penny Arcade, the crude yet distinguished elder statesman of gaming comics.  I don’t have access to the numbers, but there were something like fifty or sixty thousand at the convention centre in Seattle, including our group: Gavin, Div, Wolfgang and myself.

Stuff I did:

• Toured the Expo Hall.  It was … overwhelming.  Endless boothes, endless people, and endless noise.  I visited the Nintendo booth to get my bonus DQ9 map, tried out Sony’s motion control system, and played a music game that featured an actual electric guitar that you could plug into an amp and play normally.  There were too many things to see there: Duke Nukem Forever (which was finally revealed at the show), a giant D&D gameboard with foam dice and people as figurines; Rock Band 3 and its endless line-up; indie developers showing off their games, giant developers hawking their titles; and, as I said, tonnes of people.  I found it a mentally draining place, so after touring around and trying a few things, I skedaddled and stayed away for most of the rest of the convention.

• But talking of Rock Band 3, we went to the Rock Band Party at Jillian’s, a bar/poolhall/arcade.  I played through a bizarre song on pro-drums, hard mode, and survived.  It was awesome.

• I was in the Tetris Attacks tournament, and I got schooled.  I’m a very reactive player, and the guy I was up against seemed to actually have tactics.  But I played well, saw some excellent gameplay, and it was awesome.  Seriously, Tetris Attacks is a genius game that needs to be remade for online play.  It’s so good.

• There were panels; there were too many panels, and it would have been impossible to see all the ones I wanted to see.  So I only went to a few.  They were good times, especially the DM-ing panel.

• I watched some of the freeplay gaming; next year I’m going to try to focus on that.

• I spent an obscene amount of time tagging people in Dragon Quest 9.  I got 320+ tags.  Before the con, I was at ninety, and only thanks to the DQ9 meetups.

• Relatedly, I spent a couple hours playing DQ9 co-operatively with random people.  It was surprizingly fun!  I enjoyed showing up and being the tank, and helping them get past bosses that would otherwise wipe them.  To get nerdy for a sec, we were fighting against Atlas, and I did two attacks that did a total of 4000+ damage.  They would’ve been toast without me. :)

• I listened to Metroid Metal (and others) rock out in the Jam Room.

• Div and I went to the Wizards of the Coast bus near the convention, where they were giving away D&D paraphenalia.

• I played entirely too much freeplay Rock Band 2.  That’s such a good game, and some of the people there were incredible.

• I also ditched the con for a while and went down to Pike Place Market.  It was pretty much as I remembered.  I went to a teriyaki joint for lunch which turned out to be much sketchier than the time I had soul food in Harlem: there was this one guy, in particular, who kept talking about how jail toughens you up, avoiding jail, etc.  It was weird.

• Also, parties!  I went to the Game Deals party, and Kathleen’s birthday party.  Fun times were had.  I hate social situations with lots of strangers, but I think I acquitted myself OK.

It was a killer weekend.  I’d get back to the hotel, wake up at eight, and get on with the next day of festivities.

There were a few rough bits, especially on Saturday.  We were all snipy that morning, which was part of the reason why I went a little coffee-nuts that breakfast.  For about an hour that afternoon I was curled up on a beanbag chair in one of the handheld lounges, charging my DS and wanting to be elsewhere.  I felt much better after meeting up with the others and getting food.

Overall, w00t!  I want to go again next year.  And maybe this time I’ll take the train. :)