Sep 02 2008
Penny Arcade Expo
Greetings once again from your friendly neighborhood Searnold [Shár- Nŭhld]. Welcome to my comic book review blog - where you’ll always get recommendations on what to read, but you’ll never get any spoilers. Thanks for tuning in.
Sorry that I missed a few days’ posts. I was at the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle and sadly sans internet for a few days (how did I even survive?! I do not know.) Of course, being away meant I was also not reading comic books.
So while I catch up with my readings, today I’m going to give a review of PAX. I know PAX isn’t a comic book, but in my experience there tends to be a high correlation between people who read comic books and people who play video games. Also, Penny Arcade is (sort of) a comic. Well - it IS a comic - just not a comic BOOK. I figure it’s close enough to deserve an entry.
Ummm… it was freakin’ awesome! That’s the only thing I can say that even comes close to doing it justice. The greatest thing is that EVERYONE was so happy to be there. Penny Arcade Expo hasn’t been saturated by the mass media the way that Comic Con has. The panelists, the vendors, and all of the attendees - even the security guards (called The Enforcers) - are all bonded by a common love of video games. This led to a comradery that I’ve never experienced at another con. Over the course of three days, I never once ran into an unhappy or unhelpful person.
Of course there was an unbelievable exhibit hall. Pretty much every upcoming video game had playable demos - including Starcraft II, Wrath of the Lich King, City of Heroes, Warhammer - Age of Reckoning, Spore, Strong Bad’s Cool Game For Attractive People - Chapter II, Rock Band II, Schizo (a new game by Magic the Gathering creator Richard Garfield), and a few dozen games I’d never heard of. While the lines for some of the games were obscenely long (the wait for Starcraft II was about 1.5 hours, despite 8 play stations), the screens were set up in such a way that it was easy to watch those in front of you playing - so you weren’t bored. Oddly absent were playable demos of a few games that I know have playable demos becuase I played them at Comic Con - Spider-Man Web of Shadows, Ghostbusters, and DC Universe Online. I forgave them their absence as I was plenty busy playing plenty of other games i hadn’t gotten a chance to see yet.
In addition to the exhibit hall, there were official gaming tournaments, a place where you could play any of 18,000 video games, more bean bags for hand held gaming than I can shake a stick at, concerts featuring video game based bands such as Anamanaguchi, The One Ups, and Jonathan Couton (okay, he’s not quite video game based per se, but he fit in quite well.) And of course - there were panels.
Due to the small size of the rooms, many of the panels filled up early. But I was able to catch Gabe and Tycho’s three Q&A sessions, an hour long each. And let me tell you - those were some of the greatest three hours of my life. Gabe and Tycho put on a great show. They’re quite down to Earth and also incredibly entertaining to listen to. Wil Wheaton’s panel was also quite humorous as he discussed his days on Star Trek and life growing up as a geek. The convention was even still small enough (about 50,000 attendees) that it was not uncommon to run into celebrities while just walking around. I had personal conversations with Gabe, Wil Wheaton, Felicia Day (star of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog), and Richard Garfield (creator of Magic the Gathering.) I was even able to get interviews with a few of them for my news show, SCCG TV. I’ll post the link here as soon as we get the PAX content edited and uploaded. In the meantime, check out our coverage of The Dark Knight!
http://video.google.com/videosearch?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4SUNA_enUS288US288&q=sccgtv&um=1&sa=N&tab=wv#
(Wow… that’s quite a link name…)
So all in all, a wonderful convention. I look forward to returning next year, and recommend that you do, too. That’s all for PAX. As always, thanks for reading - see you next time.
-Searnold
