PAX East
With PAX behind me and time to think on the subject, it was very awesome. I seem to have managed to escape without contracting the norovirus, or LARPilepsy as it was referred to by other attendees. We'll see if I suddenly get sick in a few days, but I think symptoms should've manifested by now.
Viral infections aside, since we were only able to obtain Friday passes and could only get that much time off of work anyway, ours was a short stay, and therefore had to be highly prioritized and caused us to miss out on a lot. Next year, without all this wedding stuff to clutter up the schedule, we will accept no excuses between us and a full-blown weekend at PAX, getting everything out of it that we can.
Our time was spent as follows
* Hours of lines, with Mario Kart DS and Rickrolling to make said lines fun. As far as Mario Kart goes, all you need to do is hold up the DS and scream "MARIO KART!" and players will join all around you.
* Watching Wil Wheaton essentially give an exclusive, hour-long podcast about the awesomeness of PAX.
* Wandering around the exhibit halls seeing shiny objects and computer cases which more resemble the Batmobile than something that you'd expect on a desk
* Getting Wheaton to sign all his books, and chatting with him about his podcast, and which version of a book he recommends.
* Managing to keep my shit together when meeting Wheaton, and having a conversation as a normal person.
* nVIDIA's unveiling of their new graphics card, and a demonstration of the tools they give with it to developers to start making games more photo-realistic.
* Watching people wait in line to play StarCraft II (laughs maniacally)
* Being handed t-shirts I don't want by people from ATI, and pawning them off to people who actually wanted them so they don't have to go through all the other people at the ATI booth.
* Dinner with Stephan (Coco), Chris and Yonatan.
What we missed out on
* All the video game freeplay stuff going on.
* A movie Bunny kinda wanted to go to, which they misplaced, and instead Gabe did a panel for the entire timeslot that was supposedly amazing.
* D&D with Chris and Yonatan, which used that new amazing Microsoft Surface.
* The Jonathan Coulton Concert Saturday night
* Saturday
* Sunday
Edit: Just announced that PAX East will definitely be in Boston for the next two years, in a bigger venue. If you want to join us next year let us know. If enough people are interested, we might get a hotel room on site next year to get rid all of that pesky travel time. And we will be buying our tickets the day that they are announced.
For the record, many have complained about the lines and the how cramped the convention was. According to the linked article (and PA newsposts I've read in the past) They really weren't planning on PAX East to be quite so big this year, expecting only 30,000. Final tally for attendees was over 60,000. I don't know how the lines were after Friday, but Saturday morning Gabe tweeted an apology to everyone who had a bad line experience at that point (like how Bunny, Parsons and I almost didn't get into the Keynote, and how Lolo and Stuart didn't get in), and said that they were taking steps to prevent it from happening anymore.
Viral infections aside, since we were only able to obtain Friday passes and could only get that much time off of work anyway, ours was a short stay, and therefore had to be highly prioritized and caused us to miss out on a lot. Next year, without all this wedding stuff to clutter up the schedule, we will accept no excuses between us and a full-blown weekend at PAX, getting everything out of it that we can.
Our time was spent as follows
* Hours of lines, with Mario Kart DS and Rickrolling to make said lines fun. As far as Mario Kart goes, all you need to do is hold up the DS and scream "MARIO KART!" and players will join all around you.
* Watching Wil Wheaton essentially give an exclusive, hour-long podcast about the awesomeness of PAX.
* Wandering around the exhibit halls seeing shiny objects and computer cases which more resemble the Batmobile than something that you'd expect on a desk
* Getting Wheaton to sign all his books, and chatting with him about his podcast, and which version of a book he recommends.
* Managing to keep my shit together when meeting Wheaton, and having a conversation as a normal person.
* nVIDIA's unveiling of their new graphics card, and a demonstration of the tools they give with it to developers to start making games more photo-realistic.
* Watching people wait in line to play StarCraft II (laughs maniacally)
* Being handed t-shirts I don't want by people from ATI, and pawning them off to people who actually wanted them so they don't have to go through all the other people at the ATI booth.
* Dinner with Stephan (Coco), Chris and Yonatan.
What we missed out on
* All the video game freeplay stuff going on.
* A movie Bunny kinda wanted to go to, which they misplaced, and instead Gabe did a panel for the entire timeslot that was supposedly amazing.
* D&D with Chris and Yonatan, which used that new amazing Microsoft Surface.
* The Jonathan Coulton Concert Saturday night
* Saturday
* Sunday
Edit: Just announced that PAX East will definitely be in Boston for the next two years, in a bigger venue. If you want to join us next year let us know. If enough people are interested, we might get a hotel room on site next year to get rid all of that pesky travel time. And we will be buying our tickets the day that they are announced.
For the record, many have complained about the lines and the how cramped the convention was. According to the linked article (and PA newsposts I've read in the past) They really weren't planning on PAX East to be quite so big this year, expecting only 30,000. Final tally for attendees was over 60,000. I don't know how the lines were after Friday, but Saturday morning Gabe tweeted an apology to everyone who had a bad line experience at that point (like how Bunny, Parsons and I almost didn't get into the Keynote, and how Lolo and Stuart didn't get in), and said that they were taking steps to prevent it from happening anymore.