I am back from PAXEast 2012 and I have a few days of recoup before I have to head out on another business trip! (oh the life of a jetsetter #notreally). I wanted to throw out some thoughts on PAXEast before I had to run off again, and I am finally awake enough to do so!
First of all, PAXEast has gotten HUGE!!!!!!! (Seriously, it could use some more exclamation marks, it’s that huge.) They expanded this year to include more of the convention center. So much so that I didn’t even find some of the show floor until Sunday, because it was hidden behind some of the crazy big displays. I followed my basic rule of “No standing in a line for 2 hours to see a demo/trailer that I can just watch on Monday”. Which means, or course, I hardly got to see any of the good demos on the show floor. Seriously, if I can’t see the demo from outside your booth, I am not going to waste 2 hours of my con to watch 5 min of footage!
Aside from all of that, there were some great things to see there! Borderlands 2 looks amazing as usual. Assassin’s Creed 3 was there, but the only thing they had on the outside of the booth was the same trailers we have already seen. Those were my two big finds. Lots of small booths and little games to see, but I think it was a bit overwhelming due to the glut of booths and the overpowering of some of the big names. Farcry actually has a bus! A FULL BUS!
I attended the show with a friend and Podcast Co-Host, RetroNick, so there was lots of visits to the Retro Gaming rooms. After all these years I learned that if you have a second controller hooked up while playing Duck Hunt, you can control the duck! Also, I apparently can identify the sound of the atari 2600 game Surround from across the room. You guys remember how hard Space Ace was?
The Table Top area was also kind of screwed up. Last year there were tables everywhere and you could pop down and play whatever you liked. This year the Magic folks and the D&D folks had ½ the room reserved for their games. So you would go in and see tons of tables open, but couldn’t sit unless you were playing an “Authorized” game. The open gaming area was very small and always packed.
The main theme of the con, at least from our point of view would have to be Mass Effect. Tons of great Cosplayers from ME there. The panel was great with awesome information, and the chance to sit and talk with some of the writers was outstanding. I swung by one of the rooms and just asked about the time of their signing and the person I asked was the lead writer for Mordin. We talked about the script and choices. Big highlight to my trip.
Overall, great trip. Looking forward to next year!
If you want to see some of the various media I took at PAX, check out these links!
Walkthrough of the PAX East floor
