PAX 2006

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Let's begin with some Q&A, shall we?

Q: Are you going to PAX 2007?
A: Yes.

Q: Can I come?
A: No.

There, wasn't that fun? Before I get into the detailed travel log that I'm sure you're all dying to read, I'll give a few generalities and summary of my PAX experience. It was awesome. No, really. It wasn't until I was in Bellevue, walking up to the Meydenbauer Center that I remembered where I had heard the word PAX used meaningfully before. Not that I'm going to renounce my hatred of hippies, but PAX is about peace... man.

No, that's not accurate. For me what it was about was acceptance and approval. Everyone there was "one of us," you could say. They knew you for what you were and loved you for it. Everyone was on the same wavelength: we are gamers, we are strong, we are 90% male by demographic. It was wonderful. You could feel the emotional support in every room, declaring our hobby to be as big and worthwhile as anything that does not actually involve, say, building houses for the homeless.

I went to PAX for the Exhibition Hall and the swag (t-shirts, posters, etc). And was I not disappointed. I discovered a bunch of new games hiding under the radar (Eets, Fury, Pirates of the Burning Sea), got to shake hands and talk to the Art Director for Fury and Pirates as well as have a long chat with the Lead Programmer of Pirates, and even got to play those games under development. Hint: I will be preordering Pirates the second it's available (planned to launch in July). I also got to weep as I played games on a huge ass Dell monitor at a perfect frame rate. Now for the daily rundown.

Oh, but don't forget the studiously annotated Flickr stream!

Thursday, August 24

I left Tallahassee at 5:20 after swinging by the Burger King for another Cherry Icee Float. Whoever got the bright idea to put vanilla ice cream at the bottom of an icee deserves my eternal gratitude. My teeth absolutely cannot rot fast enough for me. I have this habit of eating horrible Burger King burgers when on a long car trip. Dunno why; maybe I'm just asking for a heart attack halfway down the interstate.

It rained all the way east on I-10 until I hit the I-75 off ramp. Then, perhaps sensing the fact that I had never strayed this far east from I-75, the storm cleared up immediately. It was spooky. However, I was enjoying cruising through the rain at 80mph without my windshield wipers on. Rain-X is my savior. When I finally made it to Jacksonville I checked into the Last Chance Motel... or rather, the Roadway Inn. Here I finally found out what it's like to pay $40 for a room in the closest hotel to the airport. I'm pretty anal about stuff being clean, but this place was just gone, sanitation-wise. No solvent in the world could erase the rust stains and permanent sense of blandness that permeated every visible surface. I felt like freaking Howard Hughes (cue the peanut gallery: "You are Howard Hughes").

While I waited to get bit by bedbugs (honestly, I woke up with a bite on my thigh) I watched this nature show on MTV2. It's like the episode in South Park where The Crocodile hunter stalks animals and pisses then off by jamming his thumb in their butthole. In this case it starred two "Viva la Bam" rejects who happened to be extreme masochists. Sample dialogue: "Dude, I know we just met, but I need you to stick that scorpion in my butt." These Wyld Stallions would spend ten seconds talking about some Australian animal and then pick it up and let it bite them. I was fascinated and quite horrified.

Friday, August 25

Woke up at 2:45 AM and stared desperately at the phone, waiting for my 3:00 AM wake up call (and not wanting to be in the shower when it happened). Not expecting to see the wild boys on MTV2 again, I flipped around until I found the new Romeo and Juliet movie. "The love I bear thee can afford no greater term than this: thou art a villain," spat Tybalt.

As I drove to the airport I saw the price of daily parking increase by 25¢ every 500 feet, from $3.50 on up. Finally I get to the terminal and they have "express parking" for a mere $4 a day. Oh, hallelujah for the bleary and uncertain in the morning.

At 4:00 AM the airport is totally deserted. The painting guys are on this big lift spraying the arched ceiling. I can't tell if it's doing anything. The threat level is orange, which is great because it matches the color of my backpack. There are two Infinity cars flanking the main escalator. One of them has "DUST" written neatly on the hood.

It seems that the Delta check-in terminal doesn't open until 4:30 AM. I find it amusing how Americans will spontaneously form a single file line when waiting for something. Elementary school mind control hard at work.

The flight from Jacksonville to Atlanta was nothing special, but the one from Atlanta to Seattle was a riot (um, I mean that in a good way). It was a four and half hour flight with the movies "RV" and... something else I don't remember. What I do remember was our captain, Rich, cracking wise from the cockpit.

"Those of you on the left can see a wonderful view of Mt. Adams. Those of you on the right, thank you for choosing Delta."

As the plane shuddered to a landing, Rich boomed, "Whoooah, big fella!"

And before we left the plane, "Please check your surroundings for your personal belongings. But don't worry if you lose anything. You'll be able to find it tomorrow morning - on eBay."

Instead of taking a cab 20 miles into Bellevue I scrambled to catch the 560 bus. On it I found someone my age, his girlfriend (or so I presumed) huddling around a DS Lite. Yep, he's going to PAX as well. We get off on the last stop and I drag my suitcase six blocks to the hotel. Lightened of my load I head over to the Meydenbauer center.

PAX, as you might expect, is very similar to any other concert... which I have never attended. You spend a lot of time in line. I got there 45 minutes before the doors opened and the line was already three blocks long. Happily, I was in the shade and got to chat with a few like-minded fellows (a foolish thing to say, because everyone was of the same mind). Everybody - everybody! - had a gaming t-shirt on (I was wearing my khaki Zelda mural one). Make any game or internet reference and people will know what you're talking about.

After an hour they finally let us in. I got a small white swag bag and an orange bracelet that would let me into the concert later (but, exhausted and jet-lagged, I went to bed instead). The first thing you notice about PAX is, "Holy shit, there's a lot of people here." It's absolutely jam packed, floor to ceiling. The second thing you notice about PAX is the smell. The entire center smelled like ass. Prices for simple stuff like sodas are insane, but it's hard to enjoy food when the place reeks so.

I got to play a little Counter Strike LAN action, being the first one to figure out how to disable the Windows Firewall to start a server. Turns out "rkhoo" was the default player name. Funny. After a while wandering around I went back for my camera and took some shots. Had dinner at a Vietnamese noodle house whose only remarkable trait was their awesome root beer. I was going to attend a Pirates of the Burning Sea "party", but I ran out of steam early and decided to get some sleep.

August 25 & 26, 2006

Both of these days were pretty similar for me. I wasn't interested in the panels on Women in Gaming ("We need more of that") or Blogs in Gaming ("Rumors travel fast on the Internet"). Essentially I just made laps around the medium sized exhibition hall room, picking up swag wherever I could and talking to anybody in a collared shirt with a game logo on it. I spent a lot of time staring at the anime booth, the imported video games booth (where they had Japanese versions of Elite Beat Agents), and buying stuff from the PA merchandise booth.

August 27, 2006

Wandered around the Bellevue Square mall for a while, stopped by the local anime shop and bought a Steel Angel Kurumi art book (big mistake), then waited at the airport six hours for my flight.

August 28, 2006

Typed up four pages of PAX summary. Need to shave.