At the writing of this, I have only been home an hour, many thoughts and memories of the past three days still swimming in my head but, for being the first convention of my life, I might complain and I might gripe, but I had a blast, but let me get my regrets and quips out of the way really quick.
One, I am not only large, but I am heavy, and yes, I was sweating up storms and heaving half the time, but what killed me the most was my feet. Because of my puppies, I missed Nvidia’s show as well as the Protomen at the concert Friday night and an open bar. Maybe I should punish them with a warm bubble bath. Two, I have many regrets coming out from the fun and chaos of my first CON, the biggest being that I did not get the Protomen to sign anything. I saw them, I bought their two albums, and I went on my way like a random Joe who was just looking to spend money. This is right up there of my life’s regrets next to me missing a Billy Joel concert. Another regret I have is that I didn’t touch any games, aside from one or two, and I have no idea why. I guess I was just overwhelmed with everything and there may have been walking involved, and three, it was crowded. All the tickets were sold out and boy could I tell. Getting in-line for a panel an hour early so you would get in made it hard for me to pick and choose which panels I went to. Regardless, these are all minor(except the Protomen bits) because I had a great time and can not wait for next year, but enough about the bad parts, here’s the super-duper PAXEast post!
If asked to sum up my experience of PAXEast in two words, I would say, “queue line”, jokingly of course. Yes, lines were aplenty and if you wanted to get into a certain showing, you had better have showed up early. As for me, I had wanted to attend many of the panels being offered over the three-day event, but only really managed to fit in two. The first being ‘Online Gaming Communities and “Real Life” Relationships‘ on Friday, where the panel consisting of Derek “DSmooth” Nolan, Stewart “Wombat” Nacht, Derrick “Codemonkey” Schommer, Dane “Waterborn” Tullock, and Julie “LadyJ” Furman discussed how they met others in online communities and proceeded to then meet those folks in real life (with a fear from your spouse that you might get stabbed) and that, just like real life, you need to build up relationships and it will take time. This is interesting because earlier in the same day, my father and I had met up with a friend of ours from a guild we are all a part of(and have been in for a couple of years now) to have lunch and just hang for a little while. And then, PAXEast itself is a giant meet-up for real-life and online friends to all mix and mingle with each other over the same love for gaming, and the emergence of social networking tools such as Twitter and Facebook have made reaching friends easier than ever.
The second panel was my final experience for PAXEast 2010, and I can think of no better way to end it than checking out a panel on ‘Everything you Wanted to Know About Gaming Journalism‘ with some good Q&A, which included Kyle Orland, Gus Mastrapa, Chris Grant, Susan Arendt, and Lev Grossman, and it started off with the panel telling how they had come into the field of gaming journalism, and soon after the Q&A had begun which had some really good questions such as if game reviewers will get review copies of games or if doing something unique is the only way to get noticed. It was also discussed that having other skills such as photoshop and tap dancing would help get a job as a game journalist, well maybe not tap dancing, but it couldn’t hurt. What also doesn’t hurt is having a college degree, and while having one isn’t required, college can help provide the tools and skills one would need to become a great writer, and in turn, a great journalist. I was glad I attended this as I picked up some helpful tips that will surely change how I blog from now on and I’ll keep it and (hopefully) get better.
In between those two panels, I managed to gawk an awful lot around the expo hall and barely got any hands-on time as I was just too busy taking it all in, this being my first convention (and certainly not my last) and all, but I did notice some cool things here and there. One of which being Antec’s fully modular case which has God-only knows how many configurations available, but I wish I had one, if only to have one.
I also got to check out Mafia II, which sadly reminds me a little too much of Grand Theft Auto and not of the original Mafia(A fantastic game, you should check it out if you haven’t over the last few years), but we’ll see when it comes out.
I’m sure it’ll be a blast either way, I just loved the first one so much, I hope many of the features make the jump to the sequel.
The one game I got to play with is a game I am looking forward to very much called ‘Split/Second‘. In fact, here’s a little clip of me showing off how great a driver I am.
There was also a pseudo-larp with D&D provided by Wizards of the Coast, where I, my father, and four other brave adventures had to fend off Frost Fang, an ice dragon causing a nearby northern village grief. Sadly though, the creature had fled the battle before a killing blow was made, but our deed was rewarded and we had all survived to slay another day.
Going back to the Antec booth, I participated in a “PC building competition” where two people faced off in a race against time and each other to see who was faster at assembling a computer. Though, I admit it was a bit…lacking, as it was only putting in two sticks of RAM, plugging the PSU into the motherboard and then plugging power into two hard-drives, all the while wearing ridiculous bright-orange wool gloves. It was actually a very close finish(I still say it was a dead tie) but, I lost. We both came in at 33 seconds. The RAM gives me trouble, always, even when I’m not racing against the clock, but hey, I won a pretty sweet laptop cooler that works really well for my behemoth, so no complaints from this guy.
And I guess that brings us to the most important part of conventions; Swag. Swag seems to be a staple of these events in that it’s cheap(sometimes) advertising and it makes CON-goers happy. Free stuff is free and sometimes they turn out to be a treat! So, what all did I make off with?
Yeah, I missed a lot of stuff I could have picked up, but I remind you all of my gawking and the whole “conventions are new to me” part. I’m not complaining, though. 
Overall, PAXEast was a great treat and I look forward to going with my old man again next year, and maybe even my younger brother. Of course I’ll be sure to get more media and play time in, for sure. So, that about wraps up my three-day adventure in PAXEast, maybe next year I’ll go day-by-day rather than a giant post at the end of it all. Anyway, here’s to another year of great gaming.