Welcome to my secret lair on Skullcrusher Mountain
Ok. So I haven't posted in like... forever it looks like.
FFXI? Oh wow. Yeah. I will post about that eventually. Shit went down, let me tell you.
FFXIV? Yeah I guess there's some new one coming out. I'll get to my thoughts later on that one too.
I was thinking of doing a big tv/movie post but never got around to it. I still may eventually.
No, this post will be about PAX.
For those not in the know, PAX is the Penny Arcade Expo. It's a convention started by the guys that do Penny Arcade. It was was originally set up as a way for fans in the area to get together and celebrate gaming. It has since become something more. It's become a bit difficult to quantify.
It's difficult to truly explain what PAX is to the people that ask me. One attendant summed it up well at one point by simply saying. PAX is home. Another, during Wil Wheaton's panel, went into a bit more detail. Gamers and 'geeks' and 'nerds' have always been ostracized to various degrees by the community at large. Often people feel the need to hide or repress their passions in an effort to be 'normal' or to 'do something responsible or that matters.' PAX gives us a place where we feel like we belong and reaffirms that such passions are things to be celebrated.
As far as logistics goes, PAX takes place over the Labor Day weekend in the Washington State Convention and Trade Center. To give you a sense of the scope of the event, it takes up the entire center. Overall, there were more than 75,000 passes sold for the event. The main drawing point for most is the exhibit hall where video game companies set up booths to tout their latest releases or the latest technology. All of the big players were there. I think the only one missing was Square Enix, but given their ramp up for TGS that seems understandable.
The exhibit hall is only the beginning though. There are multiple theaters throughout the complex dedicated to various panels or movie screenings that took place through the weekend. Most of the other misc rooms were claimed for freeroam pc, tabletop or console gaming. One large section of the second floor was a sea of beanbag chairs filled with people playing DSes or PSPs, tinkering on laptops or just sleeping.
We hit town on Thursday afternoon and checked into our hotel. We stayed at the Hilton Homewood Suites a few blocks away from the convention center. We managed to get into town almost exactly when I planned so we relaxed a bit before meeting two FFXI friends (Fodder and Benny) for dinner. After dinner we hung out in the room and she watched a couple random movies while I watched Oregon not show up to play Boise State.
Friday is when the fun began. We got to the center early after breakfast and got in what would be one of many lines. Once released into the wild, we took a quick tour of the exhibit floor. I had been set a task so I headed straight for the Capcom booth. I stood in a rather short line and got to play a game I knew well. However, the method was different. Zombies are fun as it is, but in 3D they're pretty amazing. After playing a bit, I secured the cargo I was after and we set on our way. We hit up the Sony booth for some t shirts and watched a Heavy Rain demo before heading to the main theater for the keynote speech, often considered the opening ceremonies. The man giving the speech was Ron Gilbert, who's mark on the industry produced several games including Maniac Mansion which is one of my favorite games of all time. Once the speech was over, we stayed seated for the Q&A panel with Jerry and Mike, the two guys behind Penny Arcade. From there we hit the exhibits again for more free stuff, we had quite a tshirt collection going at this point. After that, it was off to a cool panel with the musicians doing the concerts on Friday and Saturday nights. That was Friday for the most part. We sorta just fell asleep after dinner and just hung out at the hotel for the rest of the night.
Saturday was more of the same. The first panel was a 'Draw a Strip' panel. Typically, Jerry would answer questions, while Mike would draw the comic. Instead it turned into an extended Q&A session with Mike and Scott Kurtz, the creator of PVP(another webcomic). This was due to the technical difficulties in displaying the process to the audience and the noticeable absence of Jerry, who apparently was busy having a kid. Eventually the kinks got worked out though and it was pretty cool to see the comic develop real time. Jerry even showed up midway through to thunderous applause and screaming. It was easily one of the best experiences of the weekend. Following that, we headed back to the hotel for lunch. We then went back to the center and finally got to hang out with utada for a bit before heading to another panel. That one was about sex in video games and the history. It really wasn't that great of a panel though due to technical issues and poor organization in general. Following that, we met up with some more friends for dinner.
Let me take a quick break here to introduce something known as the Omegathon. The Omegathon is a PAX institution and takes place throughout the convention. In short, it's a gaming competition pitting 20 contestants against each other in various games over 6 rounds. After dinner on Saturday, we headed back to the main theater to watch the 4th round of the Omegathon. This round involved the eight remaining contestants being split into two teams of four and playing Beatles Rock Band. They both did the same song with the team with the highest score advancing.
After that, they cleared the stage for the saturday night concerts. The acts on the bill were Freezepop, Paul & Storm and Jonathon Coulton. Freezepop was pretty cool. They do electropop and sounded pretty good. I knew a few of their songs going in so that helped. There was some great audience interaction on their part. At one point the lead singer stated that she didn't have anything to do on the upcoming song and proceeded to jump down and dance with the fans in front of the stage before rejoining the band for the rest of the set. Liz E., the singer in question, reminded me a lot of a younger Natalie Merchant. One of their founders is leaving the band though due to time constraints, so there was a bit of a bitter sweet air to their set.
Following Freezepop we were treated to an acoustic duo named Paul & Storm. They started their set with a song about how they were the opening act and wouldn't take much of our time. They were amazing. All of their songs had a comedic, and in some cases geeky, overtone. They also had some great audience interaction and did some fun self depreciating humor. They made a few references to Wil Wheaton, who was in the audience, and made fun of a few mainstream bands. They even did some impersonations near the end of their set that were quite humorous. They closed their set with a track titled 'The Captain's Wife's Lament.' The song in itself was humorous but the real hilarity came in the audience interaction and walking us through the various 'ARRR' sounds we could make to help out the song. This included the 'hopeful ARRR' and 'dejected ARRR' among others. In the end all of this led to the repetition of one horrible pun for the last minute of the song which was even more humorous due to all the buildup.
The show was closed by Jonathon Coulton. This was the act I went into the convention looking forward to and he did not disappoint. Jonathon is a bit of a geek god. He's a former computer programmer who is now making a living as a recording artist. The subject and cut text of this post is from 'Skullcrusher Mountain', which is a song of his which details the unrequited love of a mad scientist for the girl his henchman has kidnapped. That should give you the general idea. Eventually, he called Paul & Storm back onto the stage and they accompanied him for most of his set. Of course, he did 'Still Alive' early on as well for those that played Portal. The entire audience sang along to that one. The highlight though was when he sang 'My Monkey.' Traditionally, the song is about a man deflecting his personality issues and feelings on to his pet monkey instead in order to avoid discussing his true feelings. For this performance however, he changed any lyric mentioning the monkey and said Wil Wheaton instead. Which resulted in some humorous lines such as "He says he'll stay with you for always / It doesn't matter what the job pays / Cause everybody has their bad days / It doesn't mean Wil Wheaton doesn't love you." After the song, Wil jumped up on stage and hugged everyone while hopping around like a giddy little kid. It was pretty awesome. He closed his set with two great covers. The first was 'Sweet Caroline' by Neil Diamond. The audience helped on that one by supplementing the BUM BUM BAH in the chorus. He closed the show with an amazing version of 'Birdhouse In Your Soul', one of my favorites from They Might Be Giants. Seriously, I could talk for days about how awesome the concert was and still forget to mention some of the details. After the show, we made our way back to the hotel and went to bed. It was around 3am at that point and 8am was fast approaching.
Sunday arrived with promise but a bit of sadness as we knew the fun was ending. We got up early so that we could hit the show early. Round 6 of the Omegathon was scheduled for 10am and it promised to be an epic battle. What contest was scheduled? How about Connect Four? That's right. They had the last four contestants square off in Connect Four. It was pretty fun to watch though in both matches there was a clear advantage to one side. Though, one match did last until the entire board was filled. The board itself was about 4' x 6' or so and was shown on the big screen so everyone could watch. Once that was done, we returned to the hotel and checked out while securing our luggage in the hotel and paying for parking for the day.
Following that, we headed back down to an area known as Band-Land. This was where all of the artists/celebrities from the panels and concerts were gathered. We stood in line for Paul & Storm as Eden wanted one of their t-shirts. I had them sign my show program and she had them sign the t-shirt she bought. After that, we stood in line to meet WIl Wheaton. He was very cordial and chatted with each person for a few minutes before signing something or taking a picture with them. We made friends with the lady behind us and she took a couple pictures for us. I chatted with him for a few minutes about 'Arena', a show that he did on G4 back in 2002. He left the show and so we chatted about that and the decline of the network since then. I brought up one of the hosts that followed him by the name of Michael Louden and how he had died unexpectedly some time after he too had left the network. Wil had been unaware of the death. If only for a moment, I depressed Wil Wheaton. Oops. Afterward, we headed to the main queue area to line up for coincedentally, the Wil Wheaton panel. While Eden secured our place in line, I headed back out to Band-Land and got autographs from M.C. Frontalot and the members of Freezepop.
The panel itself was probably the highlight of the weekend. Wil Wheaton is probably the most grounded celebrity that I've ever met. He just stood up and told stories about the first time he saw Rocky Horror with friends and when he and his brother got an NES and played it for hours on end. He also told a couple quick anecdotes about life with his wife. After that, he answered several questions from the audience. One of the reasons he connects so well is that he simply isn't full of himself. He fully understands that he is lucky as hell to do what he does and that it can all go away at any time. He mentioned that he makes a point to not consider himself 'above' any of his fans or get full of himself. At this point, someone in the audience yelled 'Shatner!' and he did a quick 'on the nose' motion. Then someone yelled 'Frakes!' He responded by yelling back 'Jonathon Frakes is an awesome and tremendous human being and I will kick your ass if you say any different!', or something along those lines. At one point, a woman stood up and talked about what I mentioned before. She recounted that she had been ostracized for being 'geeky' and never felt like she belonged. She proceeded to thank Wil Wheaton for helping to make being a geek cool and thanked everyone at PAX in general for providing the type of environment where everyone was friendly and comfortable with who they were. Wil led everyone in a standing ovation at that point. Whether we were applauding her, him or everyone there in general was hard to tell. I think it was all three really. It was an amazing moment. That was one of the coolest things about PAX. Even the organizers and 'celebrities' just considered themselves attendees like everyone else.
After that, we met up with utada again and lined up for the final round of the Omegathon. The final round is considered the 'closing ceremonies' of sorts for the convention. There is always an air of anticipation surrounding the final contest as the identity of the game that is played is always kept in shrouded secrecy until the round itself. In the first year, it was PONG. One year it was Halo 3. This was notable since Halo 3 was yet to be released. This year, they went with Skee-Ball. Besides the machine having some glitches it was a cool contest. Afterwards, Mike and Jerry played each other, thanked everyone and then closed the convention.
Once we made it to the doors and real world again, we met up with Eden's aunt iorhael94 and uncle chytha for a quick dinner before heading home. We ran into a small glitch when we had a blowout about 20 miles from town but we got home ok if not a little delayed. It looks like reality has come crashing down though as Eden is sick and I may be as well.
Regardless, it was an amazing weekend. I'm already looking forward to PAX 2010.
Here's just about the only pic I have from the convention:
FFXI? Oh wow. Yeah. I will post about that eventually. Shit went down, let me tell you.
FFXIV? Yeah I guess there's some new one coming out. I'll get to my thoughts later on that one too.
I was thinking of doing a big tv/movie post but never got around to it. I still may eventually.
No, this post will be about PAX.
For those not in the know, PAX is the Penny Arcade Expo. It's a convention started by the guys that do Penny Arcade. It was was originally set up as a way for fans in the area to get together and celebrate gaming. It has since become something more. It's become a bit difficult to quantify.
It's difficult to truly explain what PAX is to the people that ask me. One attendant summed it up well at one point by simply saying. PAX is home. Another, during Wil Wheaton's panel, went into a bit more detail. Gamers and 'geeks' and 'nerds' have always been ostracized to various degrees by the community at large. Often people feel the need to hide or repress their passions in an effort to be 'normal' or to 'do something responsible or that matters.' PAX gives us a place where we feel like we belong and reaffirms that such passions are things to be celebrated.
As far as logistics goes, PAX takes place over the Labor Day weekend in the Washington State Convention and Trade Center. To give you a sense of the scope of the event, it takes up the entire center. Overall, there were more than 75,000 passes sold for the event. The main drawing point for most is the exhibit hall where video game companies set up booths to tout their latest releases or the latest technology. All of the big players were there. I think the only one missing was Square Enix, but given their ramp up for TGS that seems understandable.
The exhibit hall is only the beginning though. There are multiple theaters throughout the complex dedicated to various panels or movie screenings that took place through the weekend. Most of the other misc rooms were claimed for freeroam pc, tabletop or console gaming. One large section of the second floor was a sea of beanbag chairs filled with people playing DSes or PSPs, tinkering on laptops or just sleeping.
We hit town on Thursday afternoon and checked into our hotel. We stayed at the Hilton Homewood Suites a few blocks away from the convention center. We managed to get into town almost exactly when I planned so we relaxed a bit before meeting two FFXI friends (Fodder and Benny) for dinner. After dinner we hung out in the room and she watched a couple random movies while I watched Oregon not show up to play Boise State.
Friday is when the fun began. We got to the center early after breakfast and got in what would be one of many lines. Once released into the wild, we took a quick tour of the exhibit floor. I had been set a task so I headed straight for the Capcom booth. I stood in a rather short line and got to play a game I knew well. However, the method was different. Zombies are fun as it is, but in 3D they're pretty amazing. After playing a bit, I secured the cargo I was after and we set on our way. We hit up the Sony booth for some t shirts and watched a Heavy Rain demo before heading to the main theater for the keynote speech, often considered the opening ceremonies. The man giving the speech was Ron Gilbert, who's mark on the industry produced several games including Maniac Mansion which is one of my favorite games of all time. Once the speech was over, we stayed seated for the Q&A panel with Jerry and Mike, the two guys behind Penny Arcade. From there we hit the exhibits again for more free stuff, we had quite a tshirt collection going at this point. After that, it was off to a cool panel with the musicians doing the concerts on Friday and Saturday nights. That was Friday for the most part. We sorta just fell asleep after dinner and just hung out at the hotel for the rest of the night.
Saturday was more of the same. The first panel was a 'Draw a Strip' panel. Typically, Jerry would answer questions, while Mike would draw the comic. Instead it turned into an extended Q&A session with Mike and Scott Kurtz, the creator of PVP(another webcomic). This was due to the technical difficulties in displaying the process to the audience and the noticeable absence of Jerry, who apparently was busy having a kid. Eventually the kinks got worked out though and it was pretty cool to see the comic develop real time. Jerry even showed up midway through to thunderous applause and screaming. It was easily one of the best experiences of the weekend. Following that, we headed back to the hotel for lunch. We then went back to the center and finally got to hang out with utada for a bit before heading to another panel. That one was about sex in video games and the history. It really wasn't that great of a panel though due to technical issues and poor organization in general. Following that, we met up with some more friends for dinner.
Let me take a quick break here to introduce something known as the Omegathon. The Omegathon is a PAX institution and takes place throughout the convention. In short, it's a gaming competition pitting 20 contestants against each other in various games over 6 rounds. After dinner on Saturday, we headed back to the main theater to watch the 4th round of the Omegathon. This round involved the eight remaining contestants being split into two teams of four and playing Beatles Rock Band. They both did the same song with the team with the highest score advancing.
After that, they cleared the stage for the saturday night concerts. The acts on the bill were Freezepop, Paul & Storm and Jonathon Coulton. Freezepop was pretty cool. They do electropop and sounded pretty good. I knew a few of their songs going in so that helped. There was some great audience interaction on their part. At one point the lead singer stated that she didn't have anything to do on the upcoming song and proceeded to jump down and dance with the fans in front of the stage before rejoining the band for the rest of the set. Liz E., the singer in question, reminded me a lot of a younger Natalie Merchant. One of their founders is leaving the band though due to time constraints, so there was a bit of a bitter sweet air to their set.
Following Freezepop we were treated to an acoustic duo named Paul & Storm. They started their set with a song about how they were the opening act and wouldn't take much of our time. They were amazing. All of their songs had a comedic, and in some cases geeky, overtone. They also had some great audience interaction and did some fun self depreciating humor. They made a few references to Wil Wheaton, who was in the audience, and made fun of a few mainstream bands. They even did some impersonations near the end of their set that were quite humorous. They closed their set with a track titled 'The Captain's Wife's Lament.' The song in itself was humorous but the real hilarity came in the audience interaction and walking us through the various 'ARRR' sounds we could make to help out the song. This included the 'hopeful ARRR' and 'dejected ARRR' among others. In the end all of this led to the repetition of one horrible pun for the last minute of the song which was even more humorous due to all the buildup.
The show was closed by Jonathon Coulton. This was the act I went into the convention looking forward to and he did not disappoint. Jonathon is a bit of a geek god. He's a former computer programmer who is now making a living as a recording artist. The subject and cut text of this post is from 'Skullcrusher Mountain', which is a song of his which details the unrequited love of a mad scientist for the girl his henchman has kidnapped. That should give you the general idea. Eventually, he called Paul & Storm back onto the stage and they accompanied him for most of his set. Of course, he did 'Still Alive' early on as well for those that played Portal. The entire audience sang along to that one. The highlight though was when he sang 'My Monkey.' Traditionally, the song is about a man deflecting his personality issues and feelings on to his pet monkey instead in order to avoid discussing his true feelings. For this performance however, he changed any lyric mentioning the monkey and said Wil Wheaton instead. Which resulted in some humorous lines such as "He says he'll stay with you for always / It doesn't matter what the job pays / Cause everybody has their bad days / It doesn't mean Wil Wheaton doesn't love you." After the song, Wil jumped up on stage and hugged everyone while hopping around like a giddy little kid. It was pretty awesome. He closed his set with two great covers. The first was 'Sweet Caroline' by Neil Diamond. The audience helped on that one by supplementing the BUM BUM BAH in the chorus. He closed the show with an amazing version of 'Birdhouse In Your Soul', one of my favorites from They Might Be Giants. Seriously, I could talk for days about how awesome the concert was and still forget to mention some of the details. After the show, we made our way back to the hotel and went to bed. It was around 3am at that point and 8am was fast approaching.
Sunday arrived with promise but a bit of sadness as we knew the fun was ending. We got up early so that we could hit the show early. Round 6 of the Omegathon was scheduled for 10am and it promised to be an epic battle. What contest was scheduled? How about Connect Four? That's right. They had the last four contestants square off in Connect Four. It was pretty fun to watch though in both matches there was a clear advantage to one side. Though, one match did last until the entire board was filled. The board itself was about 4' x 6' or so and was shown on the big screen so everyone could watch. Once that was done, we returned to the hotel and checked out while securing our luggage in the hotel and paying for parking for the day.
Following that, we headed back down to an area known as Band-Land. This was where all of the artists/celebrities from the panels and concerts were gathered. We stood in line for Paul & Storm as Eden wanted one of their t-shirts. I had them sign my show program and she had them sign the t-shirt she bought. After that, we stood in line to meet WIl Wheaton. He was very cordial and chatted with each person for a few minutes before signing something or taking a picture with them. We made friends with the lady behind us and she took a couple pictures for us. I chatted with him for a few minutes about 'Arena', a show that he did on G4 back in 2002. He left the show and so we chatted about that and the decline of the network since then. I brought up one of the hosts that followed him by the name of Michael Louden and how he had died unexpectedly some time after he too had left the network. Wil had been unaware of the death. If only for a moment, I depressed Wil Wheaton. Oops. Afterward, we headed to the main queue area to line up for coincedentally, the Wil Wheaton panel. While Eden secured our place in line, I headed back out to Band-Land and got autographs from M.C. Frontalot and the members of Freezepop.
The panel itself was probably the highlight of the weekend. Wil Wheaton is probably the most grounded celebrity that I've ever met. He just stood up and told stories about the first time he saw Rocky Horror with friends and when he and his brother got an NES and played it for hours on end. He also told a couple quick anecdotes about life with his wife. After that, he answered several questions from the audience. One of the reasons he connects so well is that he simply isn't full of himself. He fully understands that he is lucky as hell to do what he does and that it can all go away at any time. He mentioned that he makes a point to not consider himself 'above' any of his fans or get full of himself. At this point, someone in the audience yelled 'Shatner!' and he did a quick 'on the nose' motion. Then someone yelled 'Frakes!' He responded by yelling back 'Jonathon Frakes is an awesome and tremendous human being and I will kick your ass if you say any different!', or something along those lines. At one point, a woman stood up and talked about what I mentioned before. She recounted that she had been ostracized for being 'geeky' and never felt like she belonged. She proceeded to thank Wil Wheaton for helping to make being a geek cool and thanked everyone at PAX in general for providing the type of environment where everyone was friendly and comfortable with who they were. Wil led everyone in a standing ovation at that point. Whether we were applauding her, him or everyone there in general was hard to tell. I think it was all three really. It was an amazing moment. That was one of the coolest things about PAX. Even the organizers and 'celebrities' just considered themselves attendees like everyone else.
After that, we met up with utada again and lined up for the final round of the Omegathon. The final round is considered the 'closing ceremonies' of sorts for the convention. There is always an air of anticipation surrounding the final contest as the identity of the game that is played is always kept in shrouded secrecy until the round itself. In the first year, it was PONG. One year it was Halo 3. This was notable since Halo 3 was yet to be released. This year, they went with Skee-Ball. Besides the machine having some glitches it was a cool contest. Afterwards, Mike and Jerry played each other, thanked everyone and then closed the convention.
Once we made it to the doors and real world again, we met up with Eden's aunt iorhael94 and uncle chytha for a quick dinner before heading home. We ran into a small glitch when we had a blowout about 20 miles from town but we got home ok if not a little delayed. It looks like reality has come crashing down though as Eden is sick and I may be as well.
Regardless, it was an amazing weekend. I'm already looking forward to PAX 2010.
Here's just about the only pic I have from the convention: