On March 26 there was an extraordinary amount of traffic around the Prudential Building in Boston. Hiding underneath the tower and connected to the mall area was the Hynes Convention Center, where for one weekend, people from around the country congregated and barely spent a minute outside. This was PAX East, and it was time to play video games.
But to gamers, this wasn’t just about playing games – it was about celebrating the entire culture of gaming. Gamer culture is extremely and almost inherently social. It’s all about sharing experiences and exploring new realms of creativity. This was the foundation that the Penny-Arcade Expo (PAX) was built on, and it started with an unlikely duo: two Webcomic designers.
Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins, who are better known as “Gabe” and “Tycho” on Penny-Arcade.com, one of the world’s most popular webcomics, rose to Internet fame as their tri-weekly strips poked fun at game developers, the gaming press and the games themselves. In their use of satire and parody, Gabe and Tycho became relevant social critics and humorists in the gaming industry. This was what allowed them to hold the first Penny-Arcade Expo in 2004 in Bellevue, Washington. The popularity of PAX grew exponentially by the year, and by mid-2009 they announced that PAX would be expanding out to the east coast.
At the opening of PAX East, Wil Wheaton (of Star Trek: The Next Generation fame) delivered a speech to 4,000 people in the Main Theatre – a mere fraction of the total attendance number. Like he did with his first speech three years ago, he began it with a warm “welcome home,” and then went on to discuss the importance of gaming in our lives. “Gaming is the foundation of the best friendships I’ve ever had, and it’s the mortar that has held my group of friends together for almost 25 years,” he said with the utmost enthusiasm. “We are all here today because we love playing games. Some of the happiest days of our lives would not exist without games and gaming… PAX is where we come together to celebrate that.”
As Wheaton spoke, thousands of fans watched with inspired faces, their eyes glistening in the stage lights. He was a geek god – someone who was like them, but had the charisma of a saint. “When you play a game – any game – you’re using your imagination to bring a world to life, and that’s truly special, because while all destruction is essentially the same, when you create something, it’s different every single time.”
For the rest of the weekend, the 52,290 attendees played games together, learned about various sectors of the game industry and partied with the people who are a part of it. In any other industry, it would be uncommon for the journalists, developers and fans to all hang out together, but that’s exactly what happened. It was the inherent socialness of games that united everyone.
With so many people attending, there were dozens of events to attend at any given time. Everywhere you went the rooms were always packed and the lines were long.
On the second, there was the exhibition hall where a few big-name publishers like Rockstar Games (Grand Theft Auto), Microsoft (Halo), and 2K Games (Bioshock) were showing off their most recent releases (Red Dead Redemption, Crackdown 2 and Mafia II respectively). Smaller indie developers were also showcasing some games, including BattleBlock Theater by The Behemoth, Comic Jumper by Twisted Pixel and Slam Bolt Scrappers by Firehose Games. Judging by the crowds surrounding the latter games and the games themselves, they were worthy competitors with unique art direction and gameplay.
On the third floor, there were several rooms dedicated to freeplay gaming, and they were assorted with various consoles ranging from the Atari 2600 to the Xbox 360.
The panels were a great addition to this event. They ranged from industry talks with people from Microsoft and other companies to live podcast recording events with various game media outlets like 1UP and Gamespy.
On Friday and Saturday night, concerts were held at the Main Theatre, and the lineup included bands that either wrote music about video games or directly associated themselves with it. Metroid Metal, which was one of my favorite performance of the two nights, played a righteous set of metal-influenced songs from Nintendo’s Metroid series. Also present at the concerts were Jonathan Coulton, MC Frontalot, and Anamanaguchi.
Joystiq.com, a popular video game blog owned by AOL, engaged their community in a very special way. On Saturday morning, they held the Joystiq Blueberry Muffin Top Breakfast, where reviews editor and BBMT-enthusiast Justin McElroy shared the tasty goodness of the Malt-o-meal cereal with about 300 fans. This idea originated on the Joystiq Podcast where McElroy would often proclaim his love for the cereal. Malt-o-meal eventually caught onto his infatuation, and a truly unique marketing opportunity was created.
At 8 o’clock that morning, Joystiq readers were told to meet contributing editor Alexander Sliwinski at a location disclosed by BBMT’s Twitter account in order to retrieve a bracelet for admission. There were a limited amount of bracelets for the event, so many dedicated fans, including myself, waited in the morning freeze at the disclosed location outside the Prudential Center. We froze together and talked excitedly about Joystiq’s great community. Even though many of us never had met before, we treated each other like great friends.
I saw this happen across the entire expo hall. It was incredible how thousands of strangers could form amazing friendships that would usually take years to build. I learned that it wasn’t just the social aspect, but also the creativity and passion that comes with playing games your entire life.
Thankfully, Penny-Arcade has announced that PAX East is already planning to return for two more years at a larger venue in Boston. The wait until next March will seem like forever, but many gamers are already preparing for September when PAX Prime invades Seattle. For a gamer, there is no greater place to be.