Josh Fredman (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} the_sinistral) wrote,@ 2008-08-29 02:13:00 |
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The Adventures of The SPAX -- The Sinistral at the Penny Arcade Expo
Editor’s Note: I never finished my review of PAX 2007. I made it a matter of personal honor to get these entries finished before PAX 2008, so, here they are…even if they are a bit unpolished.
First, a picture! This shows off the human traffic on the skybridge over Pike Street.
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gn
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gn
Last weekend One year ago I went to my first Penny Arcade Expo. What with the demise of E3, this is now the gamer con on the planet. Fittingly, Gabe and Tycho filled up a good chunk of the Washington State Convention Center—whose proximity just a few blocks from my place meant I could not not go.
I thought I would write a long account of my adventures there, but what is there to say, really? It was awesome. I’m glad I went. You can bet I’ll go back next year. Why don’t I just touch on some of the highlights. Let’s swing, baby!
Tycho: I can’t believe we got thirty-seven thousand people to show up.
Gabe: That’s star power, baby!
Er…whoops. Let’s try again.
♫♪ !!! Michael has joined your party !!! ♫♪
Stepping into that convention center was like leaving behind the world I knew, and at last finding the world I had so long sought. These were my people, baby! Geeks. Gamers. Nerds. Young, sassy, excited. Some people had dressed up like their favorite video game stars. And while Blackberries were nowhere to be found, everywhere we turned people were getting their DS fix on. That’s the Nintendo Dual Screen; the wildly popular, touch-sensitive handheld game player by the company whose name is synonymous with video games. As I skated through the halls and concourses of this incredible place, I overheard plenty of people chatting and was thrilled to recognize just about everything they were talking about. I was in the IN crowd, now! Perhaps the point is sometimes lost in my solitary nature that, on the occasions when I do want to take part in a crowd, there’s no better crowd than my own.
These were my people. They loved what I loved. Good games, good laughs, good times. These sorts of people understood that the way we spend our days is, of course, the way we spend our lives. They loved games, and weren’t ashamed. It meant something to them, just like it does to me.
It was geek heaven. There was an entire floor devoted to tabletop role-playing; another entire floor to console freeplay; an entire hall for PC freeplay; a main theater for major events, three satellite theaters; a humongous exhibition hall; several handheld game areas, tournament areas, gaming lounges, open lounges, and a mall in the older sense of the word. It took up large parts of the second, third, and fourth floors of the Convention Center. (Just to give you an idea of how big that place is, we didn’t even touch the fifth and sixth floors, nor did we completely fill out the middle floors. The ground floor is a lobby and mall.
The most important thing I learned early on, is that the vicious rumor that females do not exist on Teh Intartoobz seems to have been grossly exaggerated. Females were everywhere I looked…crawling up the rafters, clogging the escalators, packing the lines, rolling for initiative, and veging out on any of several hundred strategically placed beanbags throughout the con. They were just like their male counterparts—talkative, shamelessly geeky, thrilled to be here, and pretty much just letting themselves soak in the occasion. Quite a few of them sported beautiful, heavy female guts. They were gamers all right.
And while nobody mentioned it all weekend, I think deep down we all were really glad they were here—glad for the richness of two sexes instead of one, glad that the sexes were now sharing in this wonderful phenomenon much more equitably than it used to be, even just ten years ago. If there’s anything that gamers love to do with their “steadies,” it’s gaming!
Many of the myths about gamers are just that. In fact, I think the only stinky, glasses-wearing basement-dweller there was me, and I had a good excuse! (It involves a wardrobe malfunction, a staring contest with a ninja, and a case of Apartment Building Tetris gone awry.) Actually, I really did stink—or rather my shirt did. It was the same shirt I had worn to the Olympic National Park last month and done all that heavy sweating in. I had washed the damn thing when I came back, but apparently not well enough. This was the first time I had worn it since then, and, to my horror, it began to stink on the way to work.
I was already running half an hour late, so I didn’t have time to go back and change. Because it was so warm that day, and I was rushing to work and then downtown to do my errands, and finally to the convention, I had been sweating like an indicted Republican for over an hour, which definitely exacerbated the Shirt Stink problem. I spent the rest of Friday suffering bouts of acute humiliation. But what can you do? I mostly tried not to let it bother me, and did my best not to get too close to anybody for more than a couple seconds.
Michael and I arrived late, dashed to pick up our passes, and then dashed again to the Storytelling in Games panel. I sat on a chair in the back of a packed theater and tried my best to order my sweat glands to give it a fucking rest already!, to which they merely wet themselves with laughter. To make things worse, the panel was actually pretty lame. The speakers didn’t say anything I hadn’t already known, and the audience questions were insipid.
This was an omen of things to come; many of the panels I went to over the weekend were disappointing. But this one was probably the worst. I made it most of the way through, then got up and fled to the bathroom just to make sure that, yes, it was me who was stinking. It was. =(
Rather than going back to the panel, I decided to get in line early for the keynote address. I made it up to the fourth floor mall—the dome-shaped, all-glass concourse that crosses Pike Street. It was very nice up there! The people were really starting to arrive en masse to the con, and things were getting crowded. Even with forty minutes to go before the keynote, the line stretched across the entire concourse. I found my place at the end of the line and counted my lucky stars that I’d gotten there as soon as I did.
A couple minutes later, I realized I had cut in line. The line had a break in it to accommodate foot traffic, after which it picked up again. I had missed that second part. I turned around and looked back, and I could not see the end of the line! I shit you not; it ran down an endless corridor and disappeared around the corner. When they finally let us into the main theater, I got one of the first seats…and then watched for literally more than ten minutes as a steady stream of people continued to file into the theater. I learned from Michael that the line had actually stretched through an entire spare exhibition hall. Sweet!
The keynote speaker was Wil Wheaton. You would probably know him as TV’s Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation. But he’s also a blogger and a respected voice on geek culture. He gave a Very Awesome Talk. You can listen to it if you want; it’s about forty or fifty minutes.
Wil had two themes: He talked a lot about what gaming had been like for him, growing up. He and I are actually in the same generation; he’s close to the leading edge of it, and I’m in the very tail end of it. He had some of the first video game systems, and based a lot of his gamer life around video arcades. (Remember those?) His nostalgia during the speech came out just like it does on his blog, and I happen to like his blog, so it was good. He talked about the classics, like Wizard of Wor and the original Metroid, interspersed with profanity-laced applause lines directed at the people who want to bring down gamers by censoring games.
That fit well with his other main point: Wil kept beating it in that gaming is a social activity, not an antisocial one. The game industry, and gamers, are under siege by raving moralists and opportunistic politicians, who don’t understand games at all and think they are a Very Bad Influence On Our Children. Wil countered that nonsense by talking about his life gaming with his friends, and later on gaming with his stepkids. (Speaking of which: I was reading his blog way back when he taught D&D to his older kid Ryan for the first time; now Ryan is away at college! Tempus fugit!)
And you know what? Wil was right. He is right. I don’t think gaming is necessarily social—a point which Wil kind of glossed over by saying that single-player games are “art”—but often enough, social is exactly the right word to describe what video games do for us. If you go watch some people playing video games together, and mentally tune out the stuff happening on the screen, you’ll see exactly what he means. His story about letting Ryan play GTA: Vice City for the first time is the perfect example: GTA is one of the most vilified game series, and yet when you tackle that beast—when you defend it—you realize how easy it is to make the case for games. Wil asked his kid, “Is it okay in real life to beat hookers with a baseball bat and steal their money?” And Ryan replied, “Since hookers are empty shells, actually I think it’s perfectly okay.” As Wil put it, “I think he’s ready.”
Games like Vice City are probably less harmful to the development of kids than political propaganda like Fox News or sheer bigotry from respected authorities like teachers, parents, and church leaders. To put it another way: If you’re a kid and you’ve already been screwed over by your parents or by society in general, then violent video games aren’t going to help you out any. But if you’ve been raised decently, then games will probably be a source of fun and enrichment, friendship, and rapport.
Wil got plenty of laughs and cheers throughout, and a standing ovation at the end which he greatly deserved. I felt good to have been in such close proximity to a superstar, and to have shared that experience with so many people.
Wil left the stage and then Gabe and Tycho themselves came out. People were excited, to put it mildly. After the applause died down—think Bob Barker times ten—the original Mr. and Mr. Penny Arcade spent the next hour doing a Q&A. I mostly enjoyed this for its human qualities. Gabe and Tycho were terrified on stage—in front of 5,000 people, you know!—but didn’t bow to the pressure, and instead were honest and open. What struck me is that, all throughout the hour, you could tell how amazed they were that any of this was even happening…that the two of them, these nobodies, had created a movement that gets millions of website hits a month, can generate tens of thousands of dollars for charity, can influence all the big companies in the video game industry, and can pack the fucking Washington State Convention Center. They were so amazed that it bled off of them into the audience. I felt amazed, too. Gamer culture is the future! Nothing can stop us now.
Gabe proposed to his wife back in a Penny Arcade comic strip several years ago. Now they’ve got a kid. Tycho’s got a kid now, too. They’re parents, old fogies…roughly 30 years old apiece. But they’ve taken a stupid comic strip and turned it into a symbol of the entire geek culture.
(It’s not a stupid comic, by the way. It’s awesome. Go read it and embrace the bedazzlement. (Then go try and say “bedazzled” and “bamboozled” three times fast, without looking at the words as you say ‘em. Owned!))
After the Q&A, I needed to go someplace less loud, so Michael and I went to dinner at Pike Place Chowder at Pacific Place. I’d been there a few weeks earlier and was much delighted by my clear broth market chowder. The great thing about this place is that they make bread bowls, and give away the carved out bread for free. That way, you can make an entire, delicious meal out of seven dollars, which in Downtown Seattle is quite the feat. This time I got a seafood bisque, which was extra delicious because it was almost seven o’clock and I had not eaten a thing all day.
We got back a few minutes late for the Women in Gaming panel, in Theater B. “Theater B” turned out to be a corner in a much larger concourse that had terrible acoustics and an even worse view. With the crowd as big as it was, I couldn’t see the panelists and couldn’t hear them either, so we left in humiliation and roamed around aimlessly, looking for purpose.
About that time, Michael caught sight of another of my old college roommates, Kinsley Ogunmola. He was my last roommate before I left the dorms, which was a shame because he seemed to be the most compatible of all my roommates! He was a fellow gamer, and at the time he had a GameCube and was looking forward to Zelda: Wind Waker. So was I, but, alas, I had to move out before the game came in.
Kinsley, who has graduated and works at Amazon now, had just gotten off work, and so had missed the keynote and panel. He was also there alone, because none of his friends had wanted to go.
I understood all too well the importance of attending something like this with a friend, so I invited him along with us.
♫♪ !!! Kinsley has joined your party !!! ♫♪
It was finally soaking in for me, about then, that PAX was Our Weekend. As I stared down four floors of escalators and pulsing throngs of gamers, I had my Moment of Acceptance: Geeks everywhere were here, and we had nothing to be ashamed of. I didn’t realize it until then, but some part of me had always subtly bought into the mocking derision our society showers on geek culture, and especially gamers. Once that thought came out into the light, it simply evaporated. Society does not know what it is missing.
Two people came up to us, then, with a challenge! Throughout the halls of PAX was a running game called Terra Drive. To put it simply, each person gets one Life Point just for coming to PAX. When somebody challenges you, you play rock-paper-scissors, with each other’s Life Point as the prize. Such was the challenge that this guy was trying to present to me. He did it with such enthusiasm and such horribly bad role-playing that we all had a great time—an object lesson for anybody who thinks that games have to be infinitely more sophisticated than rock-paper-scissors for people to have fun anymore.
I accepted his challenge and destroyed him! (Never caught his name, though.) Then the other one challenged me, and I destroyed her too. But she turned out to be a faction leader. Part of the game is to affiliate with one of four factions, then use your team’s resources to fight enemy factions. She told us to go sign up, which we did. I signed up for her faction, the Crossbones.
But I didn’t bother with factional fighting. I waited for Michael to mouth off, and promptly challenged him for his impudence. I destroyed him too. (The only reason Kinsley got off easy was that he arrived late to the con, and his Bag O’ Swag didn’t have a Terra Drive startup kit.
So now I was sitting pretty on four life points (my own, plus the three from those I had beaten), and I’ll be honest with you that I felt pretty smug about it.
By then the video game concert—ahem, “nerdcore concert”—was already getting started, so we dashed over to the main theater. I had been looking forward to this, but alas! The volume was so loud that it was physically painful for me to listen to the music. I tried what I could; I planted myself at the back of the theater, hid against a carpeted wall, tried listening in the lobby…none of it worked. Finally, after only a few minutes of pain and suffering, I left. Michael came with me, and Kinsley soon followed.
Instead we went back down to the third floor and got in the console freeplay line, and ended up scoring BioShock. I really, really don’t like first-person shooters, but I had heard so many great things about it, including a four-page professional game review that consisted of “Holy Shit!” and some screenshots. People were saying that this is what the FPS genre had been waiting for; BioShock had achieved the glory we all knew the FPS genre had within it. It was universally lauded for its strong story, immersive setting, strong moods, emotional maturity, and profound graphics.
So we checked it out and played through it for about an hour. Sadly, I did not find it to be all it was cracked up to be. The shooting part was no help; I don’t like that kind of gameplay. The music was no help, because the room was too loud for us to hear any music. And the plot was pretty hackneyed. We only got one hour into it, so I tried to give it the benefit of the doubt, but it seemed like somebody had been forced to read Atlas Shrugged in high school and held a serious grudge against Ayn Rand to this day, eventually making an entire game all about ruining her shit. BioShock takes place in the middle 20th century in this underwater city called Rapture, led by the individualist industrialist Andrew Ryan. It was supposed to be a place for the world’s best and brightest; a world where the great are not held back by the weak; a world of commerce, industry, and individualism. But instead, a scientific discovery eventually brought the society into ruin, and all those formerly great people are now horrible mutants itching to kill you.
BioShock did have great graphics, though. Kinsley was playing and I was watching, and the movement was so intense on that huge screen that I got a little motion sick. I had to get some water and stare at the plain, motionless wall. Which, admittedly, was not as cool as BioShock. =)
(A few days later, I spoiled the entire game to myself…and confirmed my expectations: If this is what the FPS genre has always been capable of, then I’m not going to be an FPS player anytime soon. Sigh!)
After that, we watched Final Fantasy: Advent Children, one of many geek movies playing over the course of the weekend. I’d been wanting to see this one for a while, and I’m glad I did…but…golly…it sucked. Oh well! The cell phone ring tone joke was funny.
Eventually the night ran out, and we went our separate ways. Kinsley stayed to play a few more games; Mike bused home; I walked. I actually walked past my apartment and all the way up to QFC, where I did some midnight grocery shopping. On the menu: Pot roast, Tuscan cantaloupe, shrimp, Raisin Bread, fresh spinach, and delicious Mint Milano cookies, among other things. Score!
I stayed up too late, though. But at least I was doing a good thing: Reading ATH the RPG, which I still haven’t finished yet.
Saturday morning, I had to sleep through the first panel of the day. With Kendra sick with pneumonia, I wanted to not deprive my body of sleep, so I gave up on “Pitch Your Game Idea!” and showed up at noon. I skipped another planned panel, the Wizards of the Coast one, in order to wait in line at this hugely busy Subway, where there were three people on two sandwich lines, shouting at those of us waiting in line that if we didn’t know exactly what we wanted, we’d be sent to the back of the line. (“No soup for you!”) Later on, I heard they had had to shut down for lack of bread. Assuming that these people know how to deal with conventions—seeing as how they work in a Convention Center—I can only conclude that PAX attendance beat expectations.
But I did well with my roast beef footlong, and I sat in peace and watched the freeway as I ate. The Convention Center actually sits directly on top of one of the busiest parts of Interstate 5, near the junction with Interstate 90. Whenever you drive through Seattle on the 5 and pass under those two small tunnels, one of them is the convention center. This gave me a bird’s eye view of the traffic. (See previous journal entry, “Verizon Phails.”)
Saturday was the heart of PAX. I kind of lost myself in the day, which makes it harder to write about now, a week later.
The first major order of business was to get in line to meet Wil Wheaton. He had a station set up on the bridge (sorry), and a much longer line than any of the other tables’. Kinsley eventually caught up with me and I let into the line on account of he had a camera and I did not. But Michael was out of luck.
Meeting Wil was definitely one of the coolest moments of the con. I gave him a fellow left-hander’s shake, and he taught me the secret left-handed handshake, telling me all about his goal of having a total stranger come up to him someday and give him the shake. It’s not quite as overt as my flavor of sinistral imperialism, but I liked it.
I told him that he’d gotten me started on Guinness and hold ‘em, and he replied, “Great, I’ve ruined your life!” But if there’s anybody who could convince a geek to take up drinking and gambling, it’d be Wil.
He’s just like in his blog: personable, cool, eloquent. He was selling his newest book—Kinsley bought one—and doing pictures for free. Unlike some people who sit at the table and just try to get through it, Wil seemed to really appreciate that so many people were there to see him. He wasn’t arrogant about it at all; I think he was touched. I asked him if he was enjoying sitting at a table shaking hands, and he said he had also been around the rest of the convention, and was alternating between the two. He’s from Los Angeles; I told him this was a great city, and these were great people. He replied that PAX was a great con. Mutual understanding was had. And, need I say, it’s cool to meet somebody who grew up on television, who happened to be my favorite Trek character for years.
His shirt rocks:
Josh & Wil
Blame Kinsley for the bad focus, and
especially for the goofy look on my face.
As Kinsley took the picture, I was still looking for the best smile. I’m horrible with cameras. Somebody nearby yelled, “Smile! You’re standing next to Wil Wheaton.” She was right, of course, but by the time I came up with something, it was too late.
I got my revenge, though unintentionally: Kinsley’s picture with Wil came out even worse!
Due to some bad planning I had missed the Make a (Penny Arcade Comic) Strip panel, from which a sea of people were disgorging at about the time I met Wil. I foolishly decided to press ahead with Kinsley into the Main Exhibition Hall—which we hadn’t checked out yet—despite the fact that many of the people who had been at the panel were now pouring into the exhibition hall. But, if anything, it only made the experience cozier, warmer, and more germaceous.
The Exhibition Hall is probably what you were thinking of when I first talked about PAX: All the big publishers, developers, distributors, and hardware makers in the video game industry (and plenty of small names and miscellaneous businesses) had booths set up, where you could play their games, score bundles of free swag, and buy all kinds of merchandise, ranging from ridiculous to marginally less ridiculous. It was great! But it was also the sort of thing that you had to be there to really experience, so I won’t spend too much time talking about it here. I got to see Metroid Prime 3 in action—a game that I’ll probably buy—not to mention a whole slew of other interesting-looking games that, unfortunately, I probably won’t.
I was resting my feet on some comfy chairs at the Astro booth when Kinsley and Michael caught up with me. It occurred to me that I hadn’t crushed anybody’s soul at rock-paper-scissors today, so I ordered the two of them to look for anybody wearing a Terra Drive wristband, of any color. I found one—a ponderously fat geek in a Hello Kitty shirt—and called out to her. She didn’t hear me, so Kinsley got up and brought her over.
I challenged her to a match right there on the spot, for half of my Life Points. She accepted with a cruel grin.
Now, I’ve spent all week trying to find the right analogy to describe what had just happened. Unbeknownst to me, this person was another one of my faction’s four leaders—one of just sixteen such people at the entire convention. So the odds that I would have caught somebody that high ranking are pretty slim.
And, whereas the faction leader I had destroyed last night had had only one Life Point and zero Power-Ups, well…
This one had about sixty bajillion Life Points, and, more importantly, about ninety squigillion Power-Ups.
Squigillion!
The only analogy I can think of is that, once upon a time, years ago, I was playing D&D on campus with some friends. My Level 5 Elf and her party were on a ship crossing the deep sea. Everything had been going fine up to that point. So, I foolishly said something to the effect that everything was going fine and nothing could possibly go wrong. In real life, that’s a fair bet. But when you’re in a fantasy world run by a sadistic DM, that’s not a smart thing to say.
So…out of the calm blue sea came a Level 26 Water Dragon. It attacked only my Elf, and I think killed her in the first blow. Overkill would be more like it. I don’t remember how many dice the DM rolled to calculate the damage to my character, but it was a lot, and when you can count your hit points on your fingers and toes, anything more than 1d8 is too much.
That’s more or less what had happened to me. With Terra Drive, you can alter your odds of success in rock-paper-scissors by using Power-Ups, which change the rules for each throw. For instance, there was a card that read “If your enemy throws scissors, they lose.” And there was another that said, “If your enemy ties, they lose.” And so forth.
My faction leader was sufficiently empowered that she relegated the risk to her bodyguard. Yes, she had a bodyguard to intercept challenges, so that her own Life Points wouldn’t ever even be at risk. So the bodyguard steps in, and the two of them spend a couple of minutes deciding how they want to destroy me. Eventually, he settles on two Power-Ups.
1…
2…
Scissors!
I lose! (He showed me the Scissors card.)
Fortunately, it’s best two out of three. So…
1…
2…
Rock!
I lose! (We had tied, and he showed me the Tie card.)
Damn.
Meanwhile, Kinsley and Michael were trying not to gag on their own laughter, seeing the haughty Josh brought down like a house of cards by, more or less, a Terra Drive God. And, for the record, they were not providing me with a single ounce of support and camaraderie. Nope, they were just laughing their asses off.
So it went. The faction leader and her bodyguard stayed and chatted with us for a few minutes, then we parted ways. (No hard feelings of course; I was having a blast, notwithstanding my in-character bruised ego.) I think I said something to Michael about not falling for the pretty ones. He gave an affirmative grunt, but I think in his mind he was saying “No shit, you dumbfuck.”
(I didn’t play again, though, so actually I came out with two Life Tokens…a profit of 100 percent. Woot!)
We split up again, and I headed off to see the rest of the Exhibition Hall. That’s when I picked up this bit o’ swag from the PSP booth:
Japan’s Take on Joan of Arc
Joan of Arc is one of my favorite stories out of French history. It provides so many emotions. There is the appeal of a peasant female in the sexist depths of pre-industrial Europe rising up to achieve such power, and actually lead forces into battle. There’s the fact that she was left-handed, which is a personal feather in the cap of all aspiring sinistrals. And of course there is Joan’s betrayal, downfall, and brutal, hopeless end at the hands of the English. The first half of the story is as uplifting as the second half is miserable.
Not the video game, though. Oh, I loved the promotional poster so much that I hung it up on my wall. It’s a powerful image, and a very inspirational one—as you might expect it would have to be, given that it’s the first poster of anything I have hung up in my apartment since moving in four years ago. But the game itself looks, well…weird, and not in a good way.
First of all, there is the storyline. Having nothing to do with history, instead the story goes like this: Long ago there was a clash of evil demons in the mortal world. But five magical armlets were forged, worn by five heroes who repelled the demons. Now the demons are returning, and the armlets must be donned once again.
That’s Japan for you. Usually, their style of video game mythology is a smashing hit, but this time it just seemed cheap. The real story of Joan of Arc is much more powerful.
Then there’s the gameplay: The in-game graphics look nothing like the title art you see above. (Not surprising, since it’s the PSP and not, say, the PS3.) The battle engine is turn-based and also tile-based. The cast of characters seems more suited for an audience of children than gamers such as myself, including a colorful crew of monsters, villains, and pals. And the final insult: The game programmers made Joan right-handed.
All in all, it’s not a game I’ll be buying.
But I love the title art!
After the exhibition hall, the three of us reformed our ranks and went to the Future of MMOs panel. MMOs are still very young, and their future is uncertain. We all know they’ll exist, but what will they end up looking like? It ended up being the best panel I attended all weekend, and I have written about it in greater detail for an upcoming journal entry.
Afterwards, we grabbed pizza from the food court. At first some Enforcers blocked our way, but we came back after completing a sidequest and they were gone. However, once inside we found that there was only one person running the entire shop. I felt sorry for him; he had to make the pizzas, serve customers, and operate the register, all with a line snaking out the door back into the concourse. Nor was the pizza particularly exceptional, although I’m spoiled on Pagliacci’s. And Michael stole the last of the supreme pizza, leaving everyone else a choice of cheese or pepperoni.
I left a generous tip, and hoped that he was understaffed only temporarily rather than this being a regular thing.
At one point as we stood near the front of the line, I overheard an interesting remark: “I’m the only female in here!”
I had been paying attention to that sort of thing all day, and on Friday, and had never seen the females go extinct at any given location. But I eventually turned around to look at the line, and she was right. Out of some twenty people in line, and the guy behind the counter, she was the only female. It was the only time that whole weekend when I noticed such a major imbalance between the sexes. There were definitely more males at PAX, but the balance was pretty uplifting for the most part.
We ate and talked; I showed Kinsley my Joan of Arc poster. Then we went back up to Theater B to check out the 1Up Yours Live special, but, once again, Theater B sucked, so we left.
At that point, it was time to get in line and play games. I talked with Kendra over the phone. She was still sick as sick could be, but was glad I was having a great time. She had made the surprising but sweet comment that, in talking about the Expo, I sounded “happier” than usual—not that I typically sound grumpy or forlorn, but that usually I’m just a pretty reserved fellow altogether. I could not tell the difference at all, but she could, and she’s very good at detecting those subtle differences. So, it made me glad!
That weekend, I got to try several next-generation console controllers for the first time: I got my hands on my first Wiimote, my first PS3 controller, my first GameCube controller, and my first 360 controller. Now, bear in mind, that my last controller was for the N64. So, from that perspective, it is amazing how far game controllers have come since the turn of the century, and how much more damn complicated they are! No wonder the Wii is such a mega seller. I had known the Wiimote was a big step forward, but I had had no idea that the last couple generations of controllers were so massively complex. The GameCube controller, for instance, has I dunno how many buttons…a D-pad, two analogue sticks, three shoulder buttons, four action buttons, and, of course, a start button.
Don’t you get it? This is how we can prevent Dubya from launching World War III. All we have to do is port the nuclear launch sequence over from the 70’s era Big Red Button, onto a snazzy new GameCube controller, and, by the time he figures out how to use the damn thing, we’ll have him safely locked up in a padded cell at an undisclosed location.
But it’s the PS3 controller that takes the cake. I’ve spent the last ten minutes looking at screenshots of the damn thing and I still can’t figure out how many buttons are on that beast. I’m thinking three or four more than on the GameCube, plus four more if you count the double-duty D-pad.
We played all sorts of games. We played Guitar Hero, which I actually kind of liked, despite the room being too loud for us to hear the music. And despite the fact that I am no good at Guitar Hero. One benefit, though: The GH controller is actually a plastic mockup of a guitar, and most of the technical skill—as well as all of the hand-eye coordination—passes through the left hand in the form of sophisticated fretting. On the right hand, a single “strum” button replaced the customary guitar strings, and there are a couple other buttons and knobs for various supplementary features, but nothing very involved—leaving the right hand plenty to do but little skilled work. This must have escaped the game designers, or else they would have transferred more of the difficulty over to the right hand.
Just wait…in a few years, legions of right-handed gamers who had long shunned all skill in their left hands will suddenly realize that their left hands are far more disciplined and agile than their right hands. This will lead them to major crises of identity, and may even spark a worldwide revolution. If it does, I’ll be there to lead the forces of sinistraldom against the perfidious agents of DOFT.
We also played Mario Strike, or some damn thing like that: A soccer game on the Wii. It was my first taste of the Wii’s vaunted controls, and, sadly, I found it clumsy and difficult to use. I tried it both right-handed and left-handed, but just couldn’t get the motion sensitivity to interpret my intentions correctly, or in a timely fashion. However, I want to blame my own inexperience, and perhaps the particular game we were playing, rather than the Wiimote itself. Needless to say, that’s not a game I’ll be playing twice.
After soccr, we went to the Saturday night nerdcore concert. This time I was resolved to stay longer, but, again, the music was so loud that it physically hurt just to remain in the theater. I have no idea how all those other people could stand there and just listen to music that was easily louder than the Big Bang. I don’t mean to sound like a cranky old fuddy-duddy, and I like loud music too, but how much is too much? How could I be the only one there who felt physical pain?
Michael suggested that some people hear the same level of sound at different relative intensities from one another. If he’s right, then I simply have sensitive hearing—not necessarily good hearing; in fact, my hearing is below average—but sensitive hearing.
I left after just a few minutes, and checked out Metroid Prime 2 at the console freeplay area. I was a huge Metroid fan back in the day, but really it was Metroid II and Super Metroid that constituted the Metroid universe for me. I didn’t have an NES, and the next Metroid game after Super was years away. The Prime trilogy, as you know, went to a first-person shooter paradigm, and, from watching MP3 in the exhibition hall and now playing MP2, I got the feeling that Metroid had lost some of what originally attracted me to it. Nevertheless, it was still an enjoyable experience…although I really got bogged down in figuring out the controls, at first.
For one thing, they started me on a Wii, and it took me eight minutes just to solve the “miniquest” wherein I had to figure out that you need to use a Wiimote to activate the GameCube mode. After that, figuring out the actual GameCube controls was even harder. No longer being able to see Samus’ body means that you need a completely different set of skills to make precise, agile movements on the screen. It was like I had to start out with video games all over again. Overall, not a bad experience…but I do wish the music had been louder, and that the room had been quieter.
It was getting late; Kinsley took Michael home, and I stayed until closing time—2:30 am.
Once again, I stayed up way too late at home. This time, however, I was not doing anything so honorable as reading ATH, but simply goofing around on the computer, surfing mindlessly and playing card games. I went to bed around 6:30. You suck, J!
Sunday, I was supposed to get up at 9:30 to go to the Japanese Gaming Culture panel.
Editor’s Note: I never did write about Sunday, and I don’t remember much of it anymore. Following are a couple of forum posts written by other people that I had gathered for this entry, but which I hadn’t yet gotten around to incorporating.
Enforcers
Enforcer sez:
As for convention center food places, we warn them ahead of time, but after that it's in their hands. We can't exactly enforce private businesses. Although it would help if they didn't fuck up the count. Subway thought there were 12,000 coming total. They were wrong. It was more like over 37,000. Oh well, I guess we just held up PAX tradition. Subway ALWAYS runs out of bread. If anything, this should encourage you to get out and explore the city. It's a really cool place, honest. Just don't make eye contact with panhandlers.
Others say:
That guy at Subway actually commented to one of my friends about it. On Saturday, he said he had been there since 4am making bread because he wasn't going to get caught with his pants down again (or something to that effect) and that he's worked conventions in town before, and he's never been slammed like that before. Usually people explore the city and eat at more of the finer places in downtown Seattle. It was explained to him that many of the people who attend PAX, spend all their money getting to and at PAX and can't afford to eat at the expensive places. Hopefully, next year, he'll know better.
Also, I'd like to throw out my appreciation for that guy who ran the pizza place by himself all weekend. I think he was Greek, but I'm not sure. That guy knocked out about 50 people in the 30 minutes I was in line at his place, and he didn't disappoint with the food. If everybody was as good as that guy is at his job, well I can't even imagine it, that's how awesome it would be.
The shops base estimations from the convention centers estimation's.
They are both accurate.
The convention center estimated around 12,000 per day
The overall attendee count is turnstile attendance. So a 3day pass is counted as 3 people, because its expected that a 3day pass'er will come 3 times during the weekend.
Editor’s Note: I never finished my review of PAX 2007. I made it a matter of personal honor to get these entries finished before PAX 2008, so, here they are…even if they are a bit unpolished.
First, a picture! This shows off the human traffic on the skybridge over Pike Street.
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gn
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gn
I thought I would write a long account of my adventures there, but what is there to say, really? It was awesome. I’m glad I went. You can bet I’ll go back next year. Why don’t I just touch on some of the highlights. Let’s swing, baby!
INT. One Lord Rufus Centre. The year is 1947. In a large ballroom, lovely ladies with plum-tails in their hair and strapping gents in black ties mingle together on a hardwood dance floor under the studio lights, with a jazz band playing like a saucy skiff. In the arched entranceway, a distinguished pair of gentlemen in white suits look on, sipping martinis and enjoying the affections of their respective gals.Gabe: I can’t believe we’re holding a gamer con in 1947.
Tycho: I can’t believe we got thirty-seven thousand people to show up.
Gabe: That’s star power, baby!
Er…whoops. Let’s try again.
INT. State of WA Convention Center. The year is 2007.I went to work on a hot Friday afternoon just long enough to get paid, then darted downtown to get my money and pick up my sometime pal Michael at Starbucks.
♫♪ !!! Michael has joined your party !!! ♫♪
Stepping into that convention center was like leaving behind the world I knew, and at last finding the world I had so long sought. These were my people, baby! Geeks. Gamers. Nerds. Young, sassy, excited. Some people had dressed up like their favorite video game stars. And while Blackberries were nowhere to be found, everywhere we turned people were getting their DS fix on. That’s the Nintendo Dual Screen; the wildly popular, touch-sensitive handheld game player by the company whose name is synonymous with video games. As I skated through the halls and concourses of this incredible place, I overheard plenty of people chatting and was thrilled to recognize just about everything they were talking about. I was in the IN crowd, now! Perhaps the point is sometimes lost in my solitary nature that, on the occasions when I do want to take part in a crowd, there’s no better crowd than my own.
These were my people. They loved what I loved. Good games, good laughs, good times. These sorts of people understood that the way we spend our days is, of course, the way we spend our lives. They loved games, and weren’t ashamed. It meant something to them, just like it does to me.
It was geek heaven. There was an entire floor devoted to tabletop role-playing; another entire floor to console freeplay; an entire hall for PC freeplay; a main theater for major events, three satellite theaters; a humongous exhibition hall; several handheld game areas, tournament areas, gaming lounges, open lounges, and a mall in the older sense of the word. It took up large parts of the second, third, and fourth floors of the Convention Center. (Just to give you an idea of how big that place is, we didn’t even touch the fifth and sixth floors, nor did we completely fill out the middle floors. The ground floor is a lobby and mall.
The most important thing I learned early on, is that the vicious rumor that females do not exist on Teh Intartoobz seems to have been grossly exaggerated. Females were everywhere I looked…crawling up the rafters, clogging the escalators, packing the lines, rolling for initiative, and veging out on any of several hundred strategically placed beanbags throughout the con. They were just like their male counterparts—talkative, shamelessly geeky, thrilled to be here, and pretty much just letting themselves soak in the occasion. Quite a few of them sported beautiful, heavy female guts. They were gamers all right.
And while nobody mentioned it all weekend, I think deep down we all were really glad they were here—glad for the richness of two sexes instead of one, glad that the sexes were now sharing in this wonderful phenomenon much more equitably than it used to be, even just ten years ago. If there’s anything that gamers love to do with their “steadies,” it’s gaming!
Many of the myths about gamers are just that. In fact, I think the only stinky, glasses-wearing basement-dweller there was me, and I had a good excuse! (It involves a wardrobe malfunction, a staring contest with a ninja, and a case of Apartment Building Tetris gone awry.) Actually, I really did stink—or rather my shirt did. It was the same shirt I had worn to the Olympic National Park last month and done all that heavy sweating in. I had washed the damn thing when I came back, but apparently not well enough. This was the first time I had worn it since then, and, to my horror, it began to stink on the way to work.
I was already running half an hour late, so I didn’t have time to go back and change. Because it was so warm that day, and I was rushing to work and then downtown to do my errands, and finally to the convention, I had been sweating like an indicted Republican for over an hour, which definitely exacerbated the Shirt Stink problem. I spent the rest of Friday suffering bouts of acute humiliation. But what can you do? I mostly tried not to let it bother me, and did my best not to get too close to anybody for more than a couple seconds.
Michael and I arrived late, dashed to pick up our passes, and then dashed again to the Storytelling in Games panel. I sat on a chair in the back of a packed theater and tried my best to order my sweat glands to give it a fucking rest already!, to which they merely wet themselves with laughter. To make things worse, the panel was actually pretty lame. The speakers didn’t say anything I hadn’t already known, and the audience questions were insipid.
This was an omen of things to come; many of the panels I went to over the weekend were disappointing. But this one was probably the worst. I made it most of the way through, then got up and fled to the bathroom just to make sure that, yes, it was me who was stinking. It was. =(
Rather than going back to the panel, I decided to get in line early for the keynote address. I made it up to the fourth floor mall—the dome-shaped, all-glass concourse that crosses Pike Street. It was very nice up there! The people were really starting to arrive en masse to the con, and things were getting crowded. Even with forty minutes to go before the keynote, the line stretched across the entire concourse. I found my place at the end of the line and counted my lucky stars that I’d gotten there as soon as I did.
A couple minutes later, I realized I had cut in line. The line had a break in it to accommodate foot traffic, after which it picked up again. I had missed that second part. I turned around and looked back, and I could not see the end of the line! I shit you not; it ran down an endless corridor and disappeared around the corner. When they finally let us into the main theater, I got one of the first seats…and then watched for literally more than ten minutes as a steady stream of people continued to file into the theater. I learned from Michael that the line had actually stretched through an entire spare exhibition hall. Sweet!
The keynote speaker was Wil Wheaton. You would probably know him as TV’s Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation. But he’s also a blogger and a respected voice on geek culture. He gave a Very Awesome Talk. You can listen to it if you want; it’s about forty or fifty minutes.
Wil had two themes: He talked a lot about what gaming had been like for him, growing up. He and I are actually in the same generation; he’s close to the leading edge of it, and I’m in the very tail end of it. He had some of the first video game systems, and based a lot of his gamer life around video arcades. (Remember those?) His nostalgia during the speech came out just like it does on his blog, and I happen to like his blog, so it was good. He talked about the classics, like Wizard of Wor and the original Metroid, interspersed with profanity-laced applause lines directed at the people who want to bring down gamers by censoring games.
That fit well with his other main point: Wil kept beating it in that gaming is a social activity, not an antisocial one. The game industry, and gamers, are under siege by raving moralists and opportunistic politicians, who don’t understand games at all and think they are a Very Bad Influence On Our Children. Wil countered that nonsense by talking about his life gaming with his friends, and later on gaming with his stepkids. (Speaking of which: I was reading his blog way back when he taught D&D to his older kid Ryan for the first time; now Ryan is away at college! Tempus fugit!)
And you know what? Wil was right. He is right. I don’t think gaming is necessarily social—a point which Wil kind of glossed over by saying that single-player games are “art”—but often enough, social is exactly the right word to describe what video games do for us. If you go watch some people playing video games together, and mentally tune out the stuff happening on the screen, you’ll see exactly what he means. His story about letting Ryan play GTA: Vice City for the first time is the perfect example: GTA is one of the most vilified game series, and yet when you tackle that beast—when you defend it—you realize how easy it is to make the case for games. Wil asked his kid, “Is it okay in real life to beat hookers with a baseball bat and steal their money?” And Ryan replied, “Since hookers are empty shells, actually I think it’s perfectly okay.” As Wil put it, “I think he’s ready.”
Games like Vice City are probably less harmful to the development of kids than political propaganda like Fox News or sheer bigotry from respected authorities like teachers, parents, and church leaders. To put it another way: If you’re a kid and you’ve already been screwed over by your parents or by society in general, then violent video games aren’t going to help you out any. But if you’ve been raised decently, then games will probably be a source of fun and enrichment, friendship, and rapport.
Wil got plenty of laughs and cheers throughout, and a standing ovation at the end which he greatly deserved. I felt good to have been in such close proximity to a superstar, and to have shared that experience with so many people.
Wil left the stage and then Gabe and Tycho themselves came out. People were excited, to put it mildly. After the applause died down—think Bob Barker times ten—the original Mr. and Mr. Penny Arcade spent the next hour doing a Q&A. I mostly enjoyed this for its human qualities. Gabe and Tycho were terrified on stage—in front of 5,000 people, you know!—but didn’t bow to the pressure, and instead were honest and open. What struck me is that, all throughout the hour, you could tell how amazed they were that any of this was even happening…that the two of them, these nobodies, had created a movement that gets millions of website hits a month, can generate tens of thousands of dollars for charity, can influence all the big companies in the video game industry, and can pack the fucking Washington State Convention Center. They were so amazed that it bled off of them into the audience. I felt amazed, too. Gamer culture is the future! Nothing can stop us now.
Gabe proposed to his wife back in a Penny Arcade comic strip several years ago. Now they’ve got a kid. Tycho’s got a kid now, too. They’re parents, old fogies…roughly 30 years old apiece. But they’ve taken a stupid comic strip and turned it into a symbol of the entire geek culture.
(It’s not a stupid comic, by the way. It’s awesome. Go read it and embrace the bedazzlement. (Then go try and say “bedazzled” and “bamboozled” three times fast, without looking at the words as you say ‘em. Owned!))
After the Q&A, I needed to go someplace less loud, so Michael and I went to dinner at Pike Place Chowder at Pacific Place. I’d been there a few weeks earlier and was much delighted by my clear broth market chowder. The great thing about this place is that they make bread bowls, and give away the carved out bread for free. That way, you can make an entire, delicious meal out of seven dollars, which in Downtown Seattle is quite the feat. This time I got a seafood bisque, which was extra delicious because it was almost seven o’clock and I had not eaten a thing all day.
We got back a few minutes late for the Women in Gaming panel, in Theater B. “Theater B” turned out to be a corner in a much larger concourse that had terrible acoustics and an even worse view. With the crowd as big as it was, I couldn’t see the panelists and couldn’t hear them either, so we left in humiliation and roamed around aimlessly, looking for purpose.
About that time, Michael caught sight of another of my old college roommates, Kinsley Ogunmola. He was my last roommate before I left the dorms, which was a shame because he seemed to be the most compatible of all my roommates! He was a fellow gamer, and at the time he had a GameCube and was looking forward to Zelda: Wind Waker. So was I, but, alas, I had to move out before the game came in.
Kinsley, who has graduated and works at Amazon now, had just gotten off work, and so had missed the keynote and panel. He was also there alone, because none of his friends had wanted to go.
I understood all too well the importance of attending something like this with a friend, so I invited him along with us.
♫♪ !!! Kinsley has joined your party !!! ♫♪
It was finally soaking in for me, about then, that PAX was Our Weekend. As I stared down four floors of escalators and pulsing throngs of gamers, I had my Moment of Acceptance: Geeks everywhere were here, and we had nothing to be ashamed of. I didn’t realize it until then, but some part of me had always subtly bought into the mocking derision our society showers on geek culture, and especially gamers. Once that thought came out into the light, it simply evaporated. Society does not know what it is missing.
Two people came up to us, then, with a challenge! Throughout the halls of PAX was a running game called Terra Drive. To put it simply, each person gets one Life Point just for coming to PAX. When somebody challenges you, you play rock-paper-scissors, with each other’s Life Point as the prize. Such was the challenge that this guy was trying to present to me. He did it with such enthusiasm and such horribly bad role-playing that we all had a great time—an object lesson for anybody who thinks that games have to be infinitely more sophisticated than rock-paper-scissors for people to have fun anymore.
I accepted his challenge and destroyed him! (Never caught his name, though.) Then the other one challenged me, and I destroyed her too. But she turned out to be a faction leader. Part of the game is to affiliate with one of four factions, then use your team’s resources to fight enemy factions. She told us to go sign up, which we did. I signed up for her faction, the Crossbones.
But I didn’t bother with factional fighting. I waited for Michael to mouth off, and promptly challenged him for his impudence. I destroyed him too. (The only reason Kinsley got off easy was that he arrived late to the con, and his Bag O’ Swag didn’t have a Terra Drive startup kit.
So now I was sitting pretty on four life points (my own, plus the three from those I had beaten), and I’ll be honest with you that I felt pretty smug about it.
By then the video game concert—ahem, “nerdcore concert”—was already getting started, so we dashed over to the main theater. I had been looking forward to this, but alas! The volume was so loud that it was physically painful for me to listen to the music. I tried what I could; I planted myself at the back of the theater, hid against a carpeted wall, tried listening in the lobby…none of it worked. Finally, after only a few minutes of pain and suffering, I left. Michael came with me, and Kinsley soon followed.
Instead we went back down to the third floor and got in the console freeplay line, and ended up scoring BioShock. I really, really don’t like first-person shooters, but I had heard so many great things about it, including a four-page professional game review that consisted of “Holy Shit!” and some screenshots. People were saying that this is what the FPS genre had been waiting for; BioShock had achieved the glory we all knew the FPS genre had within it. It was universally lauded for its strong story, immersive setting, strong moods, emotional maturity, and profound graphics.
So we checked it out and played through it for about an hour. Sadly, I did not find it to be all it was cracked up to be. The shooting part was no help; I don’t like that kind of gameplay. The music was no help, because the room was too loud for us to hear any music. And the plot was pretty hackneyed. We only got one hour into it, so I tried to give it the benefit of the doubt, but it seemed like somebody had been forced to read Atlas Shrugged in high school and held a serious grudge against Ayn Rand to this day, eventually making an entire game all about ruining her shit. BioShock takes place in the middle 20th century in this underwater city called Rapture, led by the individualist industrialist Andrew Ryan. It was supposed to be a place for the world’s best and brightest; a world where the great are not held back by the weak; a world of commerce, industry, and individualism. But instead, a scientific discovery eventually brought the society into ruin, and all those formerly great people are now horrible mutants itching to kill you.
BioShock did have great graphics, though. Kinsley was playing and I was watching, and the movement was so intense on that huge screen that I got a little motion sick. I had to get some water and stare at the plain, motionless wall. Which, admittedly, was not as cool as BioShock. =)
(A few days later, I spoiled the entire game to myself…and confirmed my expectations: If this is what the FPS genre has always been capable of, then I’m not going to be an FPS player anytime soon. Sigh!)
After that, we watched Final Fantasy: Advent Children, one of many geek movies playing over the course of the weekend. I’d been wanting to see this one for a while, and I’m glad I did…but…golly…it sucked. Oh well! The cell phone ring tone joke was funny.
Eventually the night ran out, and we went our separate ways. Kinsley stayed to play a few more games; Mike bused home; I walked. I actually walked past my apartment and all the way up to QFC, where I did some midnight grocery shopping. On the menu: Pot roast, Tuscan cantaloupe, shrimp, Raisin Bread, fresh spinach, and delicious Mint Milano cookies, among other things. Score!
I stayed up too late, though. But at least I was doing a good thing: Reading ATH the RPG, which I still haven’t finished yet.
Saturday morning, I had to sleep through the first panel of the day. With Kendra sick with pneumonia, I wanted to not deprive my body of sleep, so I gave up on “Pitch Your Game Idea!” and showed up at noon. I skipped another planned panel, the Wizards of the Coast one, in order to wait in line at this hugely busy Subway, where there were three people on two sandwich lines, shouting at those of us waiting in line that if we didn’t know exactly what we wanted, we’d be sent to the back of the line. (“No soup for you!”) Later on, I heard they had had to shut down for lack of bread. Assuming that these people know how to deal with conventions—seeing as how they work in a Convention Center—I can only conclude that PAX attendance beat expectations.
But I did well with my roast beef footlong, and I sat in peace and watched the freeway as I ate. The Convention Center actually sits directly on top of one of the busiest parts of Interstate 5, near the junction with Interstate 90. Whenever you drive through Seattle on the 5 and pass under those two small tunnels, one of them is the convention center. This gave me a bird’s eye view of the traffic. (See previous journal entry, “Verizon Phails.”)
Saturday was the heart of PAX. I kind of lost myself in the day, which makes it harder to write about now, a week later.
The first major order of business was to get in line to meet Wil Wheaton. He had a station set up on the bridge (sorry), and a much longer line than any of the other tables’. Kinsley eventually caught up with me and I let into the line on account of he had a camera and I did not. But Michael was out of luck.
Meeting Wil was definitely one of the coolest moments of the con. I gave him a fellow left-hander’s shake, and he taught me the secret left-handed handshake, telling me all about his goal of having a total stranger come up to him someday and give him the shake. It’s not quite as overt as my flavor of sinistral imperialism, but I liked it.
I told him that he’d gotten me started on Guinness and hold ‘em, and he replied, “Great, I’ve ruined your life!” But if there’s anybody who could convince a geek to take up drinking and gambling, it’d be Wil.
He’s just like in his blog: personable, cool, eloquent. He was selling his newest book—Kinsley bought one—and doing pictures for free. Unlike some people who sit at the table and just try to get through it, Wil seemed to really appreciate that so many people were there to see him. He wasn’t arrogant about it at all; I think he was touched. I asked him if he was enjoying sitting at a table shaking hands, and he said he had also been around the rest of the convention, and was alternating between the two. He’s from Los Angeles; I told him this was a great city, and these were great people. He replied that PAX was a great con. Mutual understanding was had. And, need I say, it’s cool to meet somebody who grew up on television, who happened to be my favorite Trek character for years.
His shirt rocks:
Josh & Wil
Blame Kinsley for the bad focus, and
especially for the goofy look on my face.
As Kinsley took the picture, I was still looking for the best smile. I’m horrible with cameras. Somebody nearby yelled, “Smile! You’re standing next to Wil Wheaton.” She was right, of course, but by the time I came up with something, it was too late.
I got my revenge, though unintentionally: Kinsley’s picture with Wil came out even worse!
Due to some bad planning I had missed the Make a (Penny Arcade Comic) Strip panel, from which a sea of people were disgorging at about the time I met Wil. I foolishly decided to press ahead with Kinsley into the Main Exhibition Hall—which we hadn’t checked out yet—despite the fact that many of the people who had been at the panel were now pouring into the exhibition hall. But, if anything, it only made the experience cozier, warmer, and more germaceous.
The Exhibition Hall is probably what you were thinking of when I first talked about PAX: All the big publishers, developers, distributors, and hardware makers in the video game industry (and plenty of small names and miscellaneous businesses) had booths set up, where you could play their games, score bundles of free swag, and buy all kinds of merchandise, ranging from ridiculous to marginally less ridiculous. It was great! But it was also the sort of thing that you had to be there to really experience, so I won’t spend too much time talking about it here. I got to see Metroid Prime 3 in action—a game that I’ll probably buy—not to mention a whole slew of other interesting-looking games that, unfortunately, I probably won’t.
I was resting my feet on some comfy chairs at the Astro booth when Kinsley and Michael caught up with me. It occurred to me that I hadn’t crushed anybody’s soul at rock-paper-scissors today, so I ordered the two of them to look for anybody wearing a Terra Drive wristband, of any color. I found one—a ponderously fat geek in a Hello Kitty shirt—and called out to her. She didn’t hear me, so Kinsley got up and brought her over.
I challenged her to a match right there on the spot, for half of my Life Points. She accepted with a cruel grin.
Now, I’ve spent all week trying to find the right analogy to describe what had just happened. Unbeknownst to me, this person was another one of my faction’s four leaders—one of just sixteen such people at the entire convention. So the odds that I would have caught somebody that high ranking are pretty slim.
And, whereas the faction leader I had destroyed last night had had only one Life Point and zero Power-Ups, well…
This one had about sixty bajillion Life Points, and, more importantly, about ninety squigillion Power-Ups.
Squigillion!
The only analogy I can think of is that, once upon a time, years ago, I was playing D&D on campus with some friends. My Level 5 Elf and her party were on a ship crossing the deep sea. Everything had been going fine up to that point. So, I foolishly said something to the effect that everything was going fine and nothing could possibly go wrong. In real life, that’s a fair bet. But when you’re in a fantasy world run by a sadistic DM, that’s not a smart thing to say.
So…out of the calm blue sea came a Level 26 Water Dragon. It attacked only my Elf, and I think killed her in the first blow. Overkill would be more like it. I don’t remember how many dice the DM rolled to calculate the damage to my character, but it was a lot, and when you can count your hit points on your fingers and toes, anything more than 1d8 is too much.
That’s more or less what had happened to me. With Terra Drive, you can alter your odds of success in rock-paper-scissors by using Power-Ups, which change the rules for each throw. For instance, there was a card that read “If your enemy throws scissors, they lose.” And there was another that said, “If your enemy ties, they lose.” And so forth.
My faction leader was sufficiently empowered that she relegated the risk to her bodyguard. Yes, she had a bodyguard to intercept challenges, so that her own Life Points wouldn’t ever even be at risk. So the bodyguard steps in, and the two of them spend a couple of minutes deciding how they want to destroy me. Eventually, he settles on two Power-Ups.
1…
2…
Scissors!
I lose! (He showed me the Scissors card.)
Fortunately, it’s best two out of three. So…
1…
2…
Rock!
I lose! (We had tied, and he showed me the Tie card.)
Damn.
Meanwhile, Kinsley and Michael were trying not to gag on their own laughter, seeing the haughty Josh brought down like a house of cards by, more or less, a Terra Drive God. And, for the record, they were not providing me with a single ounce of support and camaraderie. Nope, they were just laughing their asses off.
So it went. The faction leader and her bodyguard stayed and chatted with us for a few minutes, then we parted ways. (No hard feelings of course; I was having a blast, notwithstanding my in-character bruised ego.) I think I said something to Michael about not falling for the pretty ones. He gave an affirmative grunt, but I think in his mind he was saying “No shit, you dumbfuck.”
(I didn’t play again, though, so actually I came out with two Life Tokens…a profit of 100 percent. Woot!)
We split up again, and I headed off to see the rest of the Exhibition Hall. That’s when I picked up this bit o’ swag from the PSP booth:
Japan’s Take on Joan of Arc
Joan of Arc is one of my favorite stories out of French history. It provides so many emotions. There is the appeal of a peasant female in the sexist depths of pre-industrial Europe rising up to achieve such power, and actually lead forces into battle. There’s the fact that she was left-handed, which is a personal feather in the cap of all aspiring sinistrals. And of course there is Joan’s betrayal, downfall, and brutal, hopeless end at the hands of the English. The first half of the story is as uplifting as the second half is miserable.
Not the video game, though. Oh, I loved the promotional poster so much that I hung it up on my wall. It’s a powerful image, and a very inspirational one—as you might expect it would have to be, given that it’s the first poster of anything I have hung up in my apartment since moving in four years ago. But the game itself looks, well…weird, and not in a good way.
First of all, there is the storyline. Having nothing to do with history, instead the story goes like this: Long ago there was a clash of evil demons in the mortal world. But five magical armlets were forged, worn by five heroes who repelled the demons. Now the demons are returning, and the armlets must be donned once again.
That’s Japan for you. Usually, their style of video game mythology is a smashing hit, but this time it just seemed cheap. The real story of Joan of Arc is much more powerful.
Then there’s the gameplay: The in-game graphics look nothing like the title art you see above. (Not surprising, since it’s the PSP and not, say, the PS3.) The battle engine is turn-based and also tile-based. The cast of characters seems more suited for an audience of children than gamers such as myself, including a colorful crew of monsters, villains, and pals. And the final insult: The game programmers made Joan right-handed.
All in all, it’s not a game I’ll be buying.
But I love the title art!
After the exhibition hall, the three of us reformed our ranks and went to the Future of MMOs panel. MMOs are still very young, and their future is uncertain. We all know they’ll exist, but what will they end up looking like? It ended up being the best panel I attended all weekend, and I have written about it in greater detail for an upcoming journal entry.
Afterwards, we grabbed pizza from the food court. At first some Enforcers blocked our way, but we came back after completing a sidequest and they were gone. However, once inside we found that there was only one person running the entire shop. I felt sorry for him; he had to make the pizzas, serve customers, and operate the register, all with a line snaking out the door back into the concourse. Nor was the pizza particularly exceptional, although I’m spoiled on Pagliacci’s. And Michael stole the last of the supreme pizza, leaving everyone else a choice of cheese or pepperoni.
I left a generous tip, and hoped that he was understaffed only temporarily rather than this being a regular thing.
At one point as we stood near the front of the line, I overheard an interesting remark: “I’m the only female in here!”
I had been paying attention to that sort of thing all day, and on Friday, and had never seen the females go extinct at any given location. But I eventually turned around to look at the line, and she was right. Out of some twenty people in line, and the guy behind the counter, she was the only female. It was the only time that whole weekend when I noticed such a major imbalance between the sexes. There were definitely more males at PAX, but the balance was pretty uplifting for the most part.
We ate and talked; I showed Kinsley my Joan of Arc poster. Then we went back up to Theater B to check out the 1Up Yours Live special, but, once again, Theater B sucked, so we left.
At that point, it was time to get in line and play games. I talked with Kendra over the phone. She was still sick as sick could be, but was glad I was having a great time. She had made the surprising but sweet comment that, in talking about the Expo, I sounded “happier” than usual—not that I typically sound grumpy or forlorn, but that usually I’m just a pretty reserved fellow altogether. I could not tell the difference at all, but she could, and she’s very good at detecting those subtle differences. So, it made me glad!
That weekend, I got to try several next-generation console controllers for the first time: I got my hands on my first Wiimote, my first PS3 controller, my first GameCube controller, and my first 360 controller. Now, bear in mind, that my last controller was for the N64. So, from that perspective, it is amazing how far game controllers have come since the turn of the century, and how much more damn complicated they are! No wonder the Wii is such a mega seller. I had known the Wiimote was a big step forward, but I had had no idea that the last couple generations of controllers were so massively complex. The GameCube controller, for instance, has I dunno how many buttons…a D-pad, two analogue sticks, three shoulder buttons, four action buttons, and, of course, a start button.
Don’t you get it? This is how we can prevent Dubya from launching World War III. All we have to do is port the nuclear launch sequence over from the 70’s era Big Red Button, onto a snazzy new GameCube controller, and, by the time he figures out how to use the damn thing, we’ll have him safely locked up in a padded cell at an undisclosed location.
But it’s the PS3 controller that takes the cake. I’ve spent the last ten minutes looking at screenshots of the damn thing and I still can’t figure out how many buttons are on that beast. I’m thinking three or four more than on the GameCube, plus four more if you count the double-duty D-pad.
We played all sorts of games. We played Guitar Hero, which I actually kind of liked, despite the room being too loud for us to hear the music. And despite the fact that I am no good at Guitar Hero. One benefit, though: The GH controller is actually a plastic mockup of a guitar, and most of the technical skill—as well as all of the hand-eye coordination—passes through the left hand in the form of sophisticated fretting. On the right hand, a single “strum” button replaced the customary guitar strings, and there are a couple other buttons and knobs for various supplementary features, but nothing very involved—leaving the right hand plenty to do but little skilled work. This must have escaped the game designers, or else they would have transferred more of the difficulty over to the right hand.
Just wait…in a few years, legions of right-handed gamers who had long shunned all skill in their left hands will suddenly realize that their left hands are far more disciplined and agile than their right hands. This will lead them to major crises of identity, and may even spark a worldwide revolution. If it does, I’ll be there to lead the forces of sinistraldom against the perfidious agents of DOFT.
We also played Mario Strike, or some damn thing like that: A soccer game on the Wii. It was my first taste of the Wii’s vaunted controls, and, sadly, I found it clumsy and difficult to use. I tried it both right-handed and left-handed, but just couldn’t get the motion sensitivity to interpret my intentions correctly, or in a timely fashion. However, I want to blame my own inexperience, and perhaps the particular game we were playing, rather than the Wiimote itself. Needless to say, that’s not a game I’ll be playing twice.
After soccr, we went to the Saturday night nerdcore concert. This time I was resolved to stay longer, but, again, the music was so loud that it physically hurt just to remain in the theater. I have no idea how all those other people could stand there and just listen to music that was easily louder than the Big Bang. I don’t mean to sound like a cranky old fuddy-duddy, and I like loud music too, but how much is too much? How could I be the only one there who felt physical pain?
Michael suggested that some people hear the same level of sound at different relative intensities from one another. If he’s right, then I simply have sensitive hearing—not necessarily good hearing; in fact, my hearing is below average—but sensitive hearing.
I left after just a few minutes, and checked out Metroid Prime 2 at the console freeplay area. I was a huge Metroid fan back in the day, but really it was Metroid II and Super Metroid that constituted the Metroid universe for me. I didn’t have an NES, and the next Metroid game after Super was years away. The Prime trilogy, as you know, went to a first-person shooter paradigm, and, from watching MP3 in the exhibition hall and now playing MP2, I got the feeling that Metroid had lost some of what originally attracted me to it. Nevertheless, it was still an enjoyable experience…although I really got bogged down in figuring out the controls, at first.
For one thing, they started me on a Wii, and it took me eight minutes just to solve the “miniquest” wherein I had to figure out that you need to use a Wiimote to activate the GameCube mode. After that, figuring out the actual GameCube controls was even harder. No longer being able to see Samus’ body means that you need a completely different set of skills to make precise, agile movements on the screen. It was like I had to start out with video games all over again. Overall, not a bad experience…but I do wish the music had been louder, and that the room had been quieter.
It was getting late; Kinsley took Michael home, and I stayed until closing time—2:30 am.
Once again, I stayed up way too late at home. This time, however, I was not doing anything so honorable as reading ATH, but simply goofing around on the computer, surfing mindlessly and playing card games. I went to bed around 6:30. You suck, J!
Sunday, I was supposed to get up at 9:30 to go to the Japanese Gaming Culture panel.
Editor’s Note: I never did write about Sunday, and I don’t remember much of it anymore. Following are a couple of forum posts written by other people that I had gathered for this entry, but which I hadn’t yet gotten around to incorporating.
Enforcers
Enforcer sez:
As for convention center food places, we warn them ahead of time, but after that it's in their hands. We can't exactly enforce private businesses. Although it would help if they didn't fuck up the count. Subway thought there were 12,000 coming total. They were wrong. It was more like over 37,000. Oh well, I guess we just held up PAX tradition. Subway ALWAYS runs out of bread. If anything, this should encourage you to get out and explore the city. It's a really cool place, honest. Just don't make eye contact with panhandlers.
Others say:
That guy at Subway actually commented to one of my friends about it. On Saturday, he said he had been there since 4am making bread because he wasn't going to get caught with his pants down again (or something to that effect) and that he's worked conventions in town before, and he's never been slammed like that before. Usually people explore the city and eat at more of the finer places in downtown Seattle. It was explained to him that many of the people who attend PAX, spend all their money getting to and at PAX and can't afford to eat at the expensive places. Hopefully, next year, he'll know better.
Also, I'd like to throw out my appreciation for that guy who ran the pizza place by himself all weekend. I think he was Greek, but I'm not sure. That guy knocked out about 50 people in the 30 minutes I was in line at his place, and he didn't disappoint with the food. If everybody was as good as that guy is at his job, well I can't even imagine it, that's how awesome it would be.
The shops base estimations from the convention centers estimation's.
They are both accurate.
The convention center estimated around 12,000 per day
The overall attendee count is turnstile attendance. So a 3day pass is counted as 3 people, because its expected that a 3day pass'er will come 3 times during the weekend.
