Bill Jersey @ PAX 2009 (part 1)

(note: this part is just the main experience. There will be a seperate blog to talk about the many MANY games that were there)

Well, this blog is a week late, but there's a lot to talk about. I'll try not to ramble too long, but expect a wall of text. After all, it was a weekend long event and there was a lot to see and do. Also keep in mind there will be a video(s) to follow soon. We got about 3 hours of footage to edit through.

So lets begin.
For those that don't know, PAX is pretty much a convention made for gamers held in Seattle. Both video games and tabletop. Ran by the guys over at Penny Arcade I'm not much for tabletop, so I'll stick to genre we all know and love best. :D Video games.

SITES TO SEE
This place was MASSIVE!! Even though we all had 3 days, it was impossible to see EVERYTHING! There were so many panels, contests, games to be played, and events to see. Made it real difficult to figure out how best to spend your time. So I stuck mostly to the game exhibit rooms to see whats on the horizon and to see what spectacles some of the booths were doing.
For example, the first thing you see when you enter the exhibit hall is the Ninja Turtles bus. :D That's already an awesome start. The Darksiders booth had a mechanical bull ride. Except the bull was a demon horse. :D:D The Pirates of the Burning See booth was part of the ship with a cannon on it. Where the lady pirates would shoot shirts out of the cannon into the crowd. The Tekken 6 booth had 6-8 people dressed up as there characters giving away free posters and other things. And the Aion booth was taking professional photos of people with black wings to possibly be used in future advertisements. Of course, you also got a free print of the picture taken right on the spot. And Left 4 Dead 2 was giving away exclusive shirts if you got lucky enough to play the game. Talk about a win/win.

And all weekend long, there was a freeplay Rockband 2 stage set up. If anyone wanted to go up there to be a rockstar, they could. That was a pretty cool touch. There were also two freeplay game rooms. One for PC and the other for console games. Anyone could go to the table, sign for a game they wanted to play, go over to one of the MANY set-ups, and play it. They even had old school nintendo and genesis set ups.

GAMING CELEBRITIES
I got to see and meet some high profile people from the gaming world. djWHEAT was commenting multiple contests all week long. (If you don't know who he is, he's been a pretty strong voice in the gamer community for awhile. And has recently helped bring the fighting game tournaments to the forefront.) Didn't get to meet him, but it was entertaining watching him work.

Also got to meet Ciji (Starslay3r) Thornton and Robert (Prod1gy_X) Paz. Both most commonly known for there appearance on the show WCG Ultimate Gamer. But they're also both incredibly fierce competitors in the gaming world. And they are also part of the well known gamer faction Empire Arcadia . They were both cool people. Pretty laid back and just enjoying the event. Got to see them both compete a little bit as well. Thats always cool. (unfortunetly, the Street Fighter IV tournament didn't allow arcade sticks. Yea, I'm stumped on that one too. lol) Amy (PMS Athena) was also there, but I didn't get the chance to meet her. Just seen her in passing.



Let see.... Got to talk with Ian Cofino. Director of the fighting game documentary I Got Next. He's a really cool dude. And the film is really cool to watch. If that film don't get you hyped, i don't know what will. If you haven't watched the first draft of the film yet, go to the site http://www.igotnextmovie.com/. Its free to download. I promise you will enjoy the film.

Gabe and Tycho of Penny Arcade are some cool, funny ass dudes. The Q&A panel was worth me standing on the question line the whole time. lol. (I literally got the last question on my line) You can tell they were having a blast even though they were probably all over the place the whole weekend making sure everything went fine.

THE CROWD
The crowd HAS to be mentioned. Normally it wouldn't matter, but I've NEVER been to an event where everyone was so damn polite. EVERYONE apologized if they bumped into you. People had no problem talking with you. Even when filming or taking picture, EVERYONE avoided getting in the shot so as not to ruin it. EVEN WHEN FILMING!! To me, thats unheard of. The people that showed up in costumes were all smiles every time someone wanted a picture with them. Even the Enforcers (staff and security) were all very polite, helpful, and generally just cool people. There was even a guy working at one of the booths that POLITELY told me to stop filming a game they didn't want filmed. I've never had such a positive experience at an event before.

PANELS AND EVENTS
I only went to a few of these, all the ones I attended (save for one) were worth taking a break from the games to check out.



The Guild was a really cool and funny panel. Actors Jeff Lewis (Vork), Sandep Parikh (Zaboo), and producer Kim Avery ran the panel. They showed the remaining 7 or 8 episodes of season 2 leading up to Season 3. Which was awesome for me, because they picked up from the last episode I got to see. The panel was full of laughs and the actors were quick and witty with the Q&A section of the panel. Overall completely enjoyable. If you haven't watched the Guild yet, the episodes are free to watch on there site, on YouTube, and even on your Xbox. Even if you're not a gamer, you'll laugh your ass off.

Went to a Sex in Videogames panel that was supposed to study and bring light to the trend as well as the inconsistency in censorship between between video games and other mediums of entertainment. What started off as an interesting panel quickly got off point and talked more about sex culture in Japan. What made that silly was that they felt the need to talk at great lenght about a culture that everyone in the room already knew much about. They didn't have time to get back on point and naturally people were pretty annoyed towards the end. One guy even rudely pointed that out right in the middle of the panel. While I didn't approve of the way he went about it, he had a good point. Oh well. That was really the only thing that came up short at the event. *shrug* Not nearly enough to ruin the experience at all. :D

I've already mentioned the Penny Arcade Q&A with Gabe and Tycho. And I'm sure there are vids on YouTube of it. I hope there are, because it was very entertaining. As I said, those dudes are damn funny.

Also already mentioned Ian Cofino and the I Got Next documentary. Too bad that panel was held as late as it was. Otherwise, it would have gotten the turnout it deserved. But even though it wasn't packed, it made it easier for everyone to just talk with Ian and ask questions. That and we got news that he's going to continue to make the film bigger with more events to be filmed. Including a secret event he couldn't talk about since it hasn't been confirmed yet. I'm curious to see what that even may be.

There were also band events on Friday and Saturday nights. Got to see Freezepop on Saturday. They're music isn't really my thing, but there were more than enough people to enjoy there music. I kinda wish I could've seen Metroid Metal. Heard good things about them.


I think this is where I'll stop.
I'll continue the rest in a new blog later to talk about the pins, swag, and of course the games. And whatever else I may have missed.


To be continued in part 2....