Thursday (Day 0), I arrived after taking the scenic route in my car and after heading into the city for some dinner with my friend (Jeff Ward, recently of Orbus Gameworks) we headed over to the Microsoft New England Research & Development Center (NERD) for an industry-only party they were throwing. That was obviously a good time since I know a lot of Boston people and many NYC game developers were also up for PAX and even some of my friends from Montreal as well.
So after that there was a Rockstar party but I totally forgot about it and was ready to crash anyways, so Jeff and I headed back to his place.
Friday (Day 1) arrived but luckily I was able to sleep in since the Expo didn't start until 2pm in the afternoon. We finally moseyed on over to the convention center around 1 so that Jeff could grab some food and I could pick up my media badge. There was already a HUGE line back out the door for people picking up their normal PAX badges, luckily that wasn't my line for a badge.
After grabbing the badge and checking out the press room on the second floor (back ass end of nowhere as always) I was heading back downstairs via an escalator when all the sudden the doors across the hall directly in front of me open and a roaring crowd comes marching straight towards me. I didn't panic, but I did wonder if I should maybe try climbing the down-moving escalator to get away. The security guard at the bottom however was already urging me to walk down so he could reverse the direction of the moving stairway. Upon closer inspection I spotted the Enforcers (PAX's conference volunteers) in front holding up little whiteboard signs with flashing stick-on LEDs saying "EXPO - FOLLOW ME!!" I glanced at my watch and saw it was 1:45 and so I about-faced and marched with the crowd to be one of the first people onto the Expo floor when it opened at 2pm.
After a quick circuit of the Expo (pictures tomorrow since I forgot my camera and had only my iPhone) I flopped down on one of the many Sumo bean bags that were lying along the hallway, noting absently that these bean bags were the same that John Hattan reviewed on his blog a while ago. They were pretty comfy.
After resting a bit I realized I should probably try to get in and check out the Wil Wheaton keynote. I didn't know much about Wil other than the fact that he played some character on Star Trek and I've seen him recently guest star in two of my favorite TV shows (Big Bang Theory and Leverage). So I was surprised in listening to his keynote speech to find out what a serious gamer geek he is. Very cool.
He basically spent the hour thanking the games industry for making him the person that he is today, telling tales about how he got involved in gaming through D&D and how he still hangs with a lot of the D&D people he met all those years ago. He stressed on the aspect of games bringing people together and allowing them to play together. He talked about the draw interactive story has over just watching a movie by comparing Lord of the Rings to Dragon Age: Origins. Given the choice, he'd rather partake in affecting the story of a fantasy than watching one play out that he already knew by heart. He spoke of how driven he was to finish the game in its final hours to learn the conclusion of the story he had shaped, and how torn he felt emotionally when he forced one of his party members to leave at the end.
After the keynote it was already 4pm, and I was hungry - so I crossed the street to The Pour House Bar & Grill (funny side-note, I have a restaurant right by my house called The Pour House) and bumped into Dave Gilbert (Wadjet Eye Games) and Erin Robinson (Ivy Games) - both of whom are working on Puzzle Bots. I've known Dave for years (he's a NYC guy) but it was great to meet Erin, who co-hosted the IGF awards this year.
Hungry no more, I headed back across the street to tackle some sessions. The two I had on my list were a panel discussing the use of twitter for your company (headed up by XBox Live's Major Nelson) followed by an indie games panel entitled "Indies will shoot you in the knees - why we don't play fair". I was more looking forward to the second one, but the first was a bit applicable towards our use of the @gdevnet account and filled the time between now and then.
So I arrived to find this long winding line that seemed like a ton of people, but only ended up filling half the room when they finally let everyone file in... 30 minutes late. That meant I could only stay about 45 minutes before I had to leave. Unfortunately in that time the questions to the panel sucked, and no one was moderating to prompt the panelists. Most of the people at the mic were Modern Warfare fanboys asking Major Nelson questions about the franchise and what the deal is after the Infinity Ward shake-up. Really? Can we not stay on topic people?
So I left a bit early but was still to late to make it to the indie games panel before they filed everyone in and shut the doors due to overcapacity. Holy hell, it reminded me of 2005 when GDC was crammed into Moscone West and some sessions were being held in the back hallways due to lack of space. I hear Gabe and Tycho have already figured out they can't do the Hynes convention center next year, but I wish they had cut off attendance at a more reasonable number than this.
So that spoiled, it was off in search of parties. The Kotaku/Alienware party of course had a line out and around the fucking block by the time I managed to make it there, so I hooked up with guys from NYCGameIndustry.com and we found our way to the G4 party at a bar right next to the convention center. Shortly afterwards I joined my friend Chris Oltyan from ZGGames to test out the paper craft version of his video game (that he has considered turning into a board game all itself as well).
I finally headed back to Jeff's place around 1am, but getting there was a bit difficult being that my Google Maps app on my iPhone was still set to give me walking directions while I was in my car. Of course, I didn't realize this and was cursing at it for sending me down one-way streets. I managed to catch them all until I turned down one that wasn't marked on the map as one-way (or was hidden beneath the purple guide line) and of course a cop car was coming in the opposite direction. Luckily the officers were cool and let me back up and turn around while they kept the traffic back. It was then I remembered I never reset the app to driving directions from when I was walking around to parties around the convention center.
Oy.
So now it's just after 3am and I need to wake up in about 5 hours for the second day of PAX. I'll have media-only access to the Expo floor for an hour tomorrow morning so I'll be taking lots of pictures then.
