By // Olivia
FRIDAY
As expected I got shit for sleep Thursday, but somehow when my alarm goes off at 830am during PAX days, I magically leap out of bed. I manage to condense an hour+ of getting ready into 30 minutes - believe me it's crazy. I inhale a breakfast consisting of a cinnamon roll (for calories/sugar), a banana & two cups of coffee/three sugars each, then take a shuttle to the convention center; it is exactly the same routine for me every year. Unfortunately when I arrived at the con center, I discovered that we were being asked to wait outside, where it had been snowing. I joined a line of over 1000 people & nearly DIED since I purposely wore only a tube-top, a shrug, shorts, tights & boots - also I'm from Florida. Some really nice guy from New York let me borrow his jacket though - good on ya, guy who I can't remember the name of!
Once inside, I dodged the crowd in the queue line & found a nice quiet corner to outline my plan of attack. I discovered this amazing app called Guidebook that had pretty much all the information anyone would want to know about PAX, & created my schedule for the weekend. (I HIGHLY SUGGEST ACQUIRING THIS APP IF YOU ATTEND PAX) Only finding interest in two of Friday's panels, my day opened to exploring the expo hall, meeting game developers & bigging myself up (hey, somebody has to do it!). I'm no germaphobe but I do have some rules... 1. always drink with a straw instead of straight out of a cup you didn't clean yourself, 2. eat finger-food with a plastic bag & 3. don't touch the gaming equipment at PAX. I have never once been sick after this event, but I also don't get to play any of the games.... I can't stand waiting in lines, anyway. I saw some cool & creative games like Transistor, MechKnight, Delver's Drop, had a great conversation with the president of indie publisher Mugen Studios, & met several other developers spanning about 55% of the show floor. I was constantly asked who I was cosplaying as, only to respond that I was there as myself! Though surprised, several people still requested pictures; I haven't seen any of them but I hope they came out okay~
Want a good story in your game? Get an Indie! - I'm not sure exactly what I wanted to get from this panel, but it seemed relevant enough to me. I sat through about thirty minutes of it before I found myself posting to facebook - sign: I'm bored. I decided to leave & have some lunch, then return to the expo hall & sweep the show-floor again before it closed at six.
I met Ben whilst perusing the epicness of the Fangamer booth. Somehow we began talking & I expressed my intentions, dreams & philosophies to him. Normally, random people I meet at PAX feign interest, & start posing irrelevant smalltalk like "Have you seen (insert anime)?" or "So what games are you playing right now?" but that wasn't the case here. After hearing my industry goals, Ben insisted that I attend a panel he would be hosting & offered to reserve a seat. Passion vs Skill Sets: Weighing the Best Candidates was scheduled for Saturday, & I'd already planned to be there.
I bought a Small Key necklace from LoZ , but I could have gone broke standing at Fangamer. The items that they produce are really high quality & I wanted pretty much everything! After awarding you a coin for your purchase, you could participate in a cute game - the coin could be used at a nearby gumball machine, which distributed a capsule containing a free Fangamer pin (which are adorable) & a fortune-sized challenge asking you to fess up about your nerdy tendencies. My challenge was to draw my favorite power-up on the white board behind us, already 98% covered in other challengers' answers to various game-related questions. Not wanting to choose the wrong answer & kick myself later, I actually thought about this for five+ minutes before I decided it was exploding ninja stars from Kirby Crystal Shards. I won a sticker. While I was standing there trying to come up with the correct response, FG's artist Kary drew a caricature of me!
How To Energize Business and Millennial Brand Focus: A Giant Bomb Panel Eduknowledgement Experience - This was the best named panel of the whole show, maybe of the event's existence? I attended this "panel" (if you can really call it that...) as usual & even made it into a few shots! (black corset, glasses, lavender hair) Part 1, Part 2 of the show. I was fortunate enough to sit in the front-row next to my friend Jeff Green of PopCap Games, who often seems to be my seat-buddy for GB. Of course I didn't laugh harder at any other point the entire weekend, & if you're a fan of Jeff Gertsmann & the Giantbomb crew I definitely suggest watching up to at least the Q&A. In my experience this panel went on the longest it has ever & my guess is it now holds a record for it, somewhere. I had the pleasure of joining the crew to close down the hotel bar afterwards.
SATURDAY
Passion vs Skill Sets - Now going on six hours of sleep, four espresso shots & five cups of coffee since Thursday, I took a nap in the line for my first Saturday panel. Since I'm a genius, I bring a small foam pad with me to PAX every year - folded to sit on, & rolled out to lay on. I would never go without this thing! The panel itself was actually quite good & very memorable, lead by college instructor & academic relations consultant, Benjamin Cavallari. The team he had assembled to answer the questions posed in the panel was very informative & covered wide ground ranging from larger game companies to indie game developers. This was definitely one of the most well-organized panels I've been to at any PAX, & as a game-design-hopeful, I feel like I benefited from having been there. I really appreciate the effort that Ben put into making that panel, & would absolutely attend any further panels that he was a part of.
I made my final rounds of the show-floor & completely ran out of both sets of business cards! Don't know how I didn't catch this chick cosplaying as female Raiden from Revengeance... or this awesome Queen Bee from Darkstalkers! Female Demon Hunter from Diablo 3. Nice casual Raiden/Revengeance.
The Making of Dust - It's no secret that I loved Dust: An Elysian Tail, & when it comes to Steam, I'm probably buying it again & playing it one more time - making it my third play-through (review forth-coming). I was regularly impressed with this game & have massive respect for the game's designer, president of Humble Hearts, Dean Dodrill. Personally I find the man to be a genius, & though he had help from other people during the making of Dust, he pretty much did the entire project all on his own - from programming, to graphics & animation. (I'm totally in this picture he took!) In this panel, Dean told the incredible story of Dust's journey from inception to a final, tangible product. Presentations on projectors with the use of PowerPoint are the core visuals of most panels, but Dean took this key element to a whole new level - he worked his presentation, each slide of information, into actual levels from the game. During the presentation, he literally played through each slide with the use of an Xbox controller. It was beautiful, & I cried several times. Fortunately, TwitchTV covered PAX so you can watch Dean's panel. I was lucky enough to get Dean to replay through the panel during Q&A so I could record it for myself, & afterwards I was able to meet him properly. I expressed my appreciation for the self-aware humor in the characters' dialog, & got to take our picture! Dean is an awesome, inspiring person & certainly one of my heroes.
Saturday may have come to a close earlier than I wished, but by 800pm I found myself nearly passing out on the convention center floor listening to Sabrepulse. I succumbed to hunger & bought dreaded "con-food", consisting of an $8 chicken salad that was FROZEN... only the chicken was edible. Thanks to Lexi & her bf for keeping me company through the gauntlet of bitching that ensued as I attempted to eat said salad; if it weren't for them I probably would have rage-thrown the box into the cashier's face. Joke of the night, I notice Lexi's Skyrim logo earrings are broken & I remark, "I guess those aren't REAL dragonbone;" her bf says dryly "yeah dragonbone is heavy" to which I cackled "YEAH IT IS."
Unfortunately, I only got passes for Friday/Saturday, so I wasn't able to attend Sunday panels, but next year I'm shooting for a media badge! Somehow I missed Nicole completely, again! Hopefully we will both have media badges at PAX East 2014.
PAX 2013 was one of my better experiences; I got the best reception thus far by the developers that I met, & three of the most memorable panels I've attended happened during this same show. I only got nine hours of sleep by the time I was playing Kirby Squeak Squad on my DSi waiting for my plane on Sunday, but I basically slayed this one. Hopefully I made enough of an impression on people that I'll get some contract work & finally edge my way into the indie game industry........
No comments:
Post a Comment