Back from PAX! This weekend was insane. With just under 60,000 gamers, nerds, and the like converging on Seattle this past weekend; I was seriously in sensory overload. By far, the best part of PAX was the people. I met sooo many amazing people this weekend, hung out and just played / talked games. It was great to meet everyone, especially those from the community. Such as when I met up with TJ, one of our PS3 community members, (see:above pic) and hung out on Saturday. We hit up the show floor, checking out the booths and even inadvertently won a SOCOM: Confortation mini-tournament. I added the prize to the gaggle of swag the show had to offer:
… and that was just from the first day. The good stuff (including an exclusive Fallout 3 poster) came the next day. Fallout 3 was definitely the game of the show, with an incredible booth, complete with post-apocalyptic “booth babes”:
The game looks amazing, and is probably one of my most anticipated games to come out this year. Fallout 3 and Left 4 Dead were both playable and looking fantastic, along with Gears of War 2, Spore, Mirrors Edge and quite a few more. It was cool to hear Call of Duty 4 being referenced when people were demoing games, such as:
Player: “What are the controls?”
Dev: “It’s just like Call of Duty 4, sooooo.”
When your game is being referenced as a standard for ANYTHING, you know it did something right!
After getting burnt out on the crowds of the show room floor, they had a console free play room I ended up crashing in for a few hours on Saturday night when I saw a lone Mario Kart-er looking for a challenge. That is exactly why PAX is so amazingly awesome. There is nothing like walking into a random room and sitting down to a four player game of Mario Kart with complete strangers and feeling like you’ve known them your entire life. PAX was filled with moments like that, thanks in no small part to the power of Twitter. The iPhone twitter app, Twinkle, exploded over the weekend with the amount of PAXers tweeting at the expo. I realized half of my tweets from over the weekend didn’t even publish to twitter because of Twinkle crashing, but the Near By feature was awesome for meeting up with fellow gamers around PAX. Sunday night was the craziest randomhappenstance I’ve had in years, by the end of the night our crew of 2 grew to 12 and ended in our hotel room. After taking a midnight wander through downtown seattle looking for a late night cheese burger, we ran into two fellow twitter addicts in the elevator which decided to join us. We got to a near by hamburger joint to find it closed, about the same time 3 PAX enforcers from New York were seeking some grub of their own. So the eight of us decided to seek food together and wound up at a local bar / grill called Taphouse Grill a few blocks from the convention center where we added a traveling musician from Bejing, China and a fellow PAX attendee who was hanging with him to the group. All in all we ended up eating a great dinner and then hung out in the hotel room talking games, movies, music etc. until 4 AM before we headed to the airport for a 7 am flight. Again… moments like this made PAX what it is, and why I strongly believe it is FAR more important as a gaming event than E3 has turned into. It’s about the gamers, the fans, and just geeking out something we all have a huge passion for.
Other than that, it was really cool to run into Felicia Day of Dr. Horrible / The Guild (see: above), Wil Weaton, and several others while at the show (all of which are Twitterers). Last but not least, I ran into at least one Call of Duty 4 cosplayer:
In addition to scoring a PAX exclusive shirt of Wil Wheaton’s which has my new favorite personal motto:
Can’t wait till PAX 2009, and if you aren’t already GET ON TWITTER, follow me, let’s play some games. It’s great for keeping touch with what your friends and fellow gamers are doing and joining in. Go to Twitter, sign up, go to my Twitter, follow me, and let’s play some games. Come on…. everyone’s doing it man! PEER PRESSURE!
