I got Rick-rolled by Jonathan Coulton.
Well, me and about 4000 other lucky PAX attendees. I also had "Fancy Pants" stuck in my head for the rest of the weekend. Fancy Pants. Why couldn't it have been "Skullcrusher Mountain"?!? (Which will be available at some future point for Rock Band, it seems, and I cannot wait.)
Felicia Day is very nice -- like, seriously, exceptionally nice; very friendly and personable -- and actually, kinda surprisingly, prettier than she is on film. We missed the MC Frontalot concert, but picked up his new CD the next day, and he was also very nice -- he always gives off the "I'm still a geek and deathly uncomfortable being even-sorta-kinda famous" vibe, but it comes off very cute -- Windows crashed on him while he was trying to run our card, and Front got terribly flustered about it, and was very grateful when we volunteered to just run to the ATM instead. The line for Wil Wheaton was always way too fucking long, which made me sad.
The Rock Band II demo had a line that went around the stage twice -- and most of the people who got up were really, amazingly good. (They were all playing Hard or Expert on songs they'd presumably never seen before, and doing well. By contrast, my guitar skill maxes out at a reliable Medium, and I can only manage to sing two songs on Expert.) The Guitar Hero: World Tour demo had a line about two bands deep, and it seemed that every single one played "Livin' On a Prayer", and mostly badly. Now, the GH:WT drum kit looked pretty sweet, and I kind of have to assume that there are at least a few other, equally playable songs on the list. But I still think the prospects for both games are pretty clear.
On Saturday I participated in a SingStar contest and completely mauled "Total Eclipse of the Heart" in front of probably a hundred people. I would say that it was because I couldn't hear the music, and was having to time myself based solely on the visuals -- which was true, and a big problem was how badly I got off-track based on my memory of the tempo, adjusted for nerves But in all truth, it does hit in a tricky part of my range, so I might not have done much better if I could have heard it. :-P
craymore came out the big swag winner -- they were doing comic trivia at the Champions Online booth, and he answered a question about "PS 238" to win a Champions backpack, a t-shirt, and a skateboard. We also both got all sorts of posters and shirts and postcards and temporary tattoos and other, random, completely wackass shit. We each got a Magic mousepad, and a Dragon Age tattoo sleeve (do people actually wear these things? I mean, when they're not at conventions where every other geek who sat through the demo is also wearing one?), and a fingerless glove from some gaming website we've never heard of. Adam got a metal... thing for Castle Crashers, and I got a stuffed animal from Twin Skies.
Speaking of Dragon Age: Origins, the game looks really beautiful. Warhammer Online had a really pretty trailer up. craymore is very interested in Fallout 3, but at no point were we willing to wait hours to go through the demo and jump through eight zillion hoops to get a poster or a handpuppet.
Wizards of the Coast had a well-stocked, well-attended booth. I haven't been to enough conventions to know if that was, in fact, their A game, but they did a decent job of meeting the fans and fulfilling their expectations -- in sharp contrast to, say, CCP/White Wolf, who set up a ginormous EVE booth (which you couldn't really get into, because the same people would camp out in there for days) and filled it with assholes who (except for one guy) not only could not/would not answer your White Wolf/WoD questions but were nasty about it besides. It was extra disappointing because craymore and I had been lead to expect better from past experience, and from actually meeting a CCP guy by the name of John on our way to the convention. John shared some very cramped space with us on the very full bus from the airport (he explained that everyone else from CCP had flown in the day before, but he'd stayed behind to finish up work) and we had a great conversation about gaming... and generally, we parted with the impression that if John was an example of who we'd meet from CCP, then we were in for a great experience! But no, it turns out that while John was the sort of awesome guy who'd stay late to make sure everything got covered, everyone else was exactly the sort of jerk who'd take off early and let someone else handle the cleanup. Very disappointing.
Saturday, in general, was kind of a bust. The whole experience felt more like Generic Convention X than the Penny Motherfuckin' Arcade Expo. We didn't see Gabe or Tycho once all weekend -- and now, not spotting Gabe, that's not too surprising... but Tycho was everywhere last year. Too many people. Not enough space -- and it wasn't like (what I've heard of) PAX'06, where everyone was crammed in like sardines but were generally cool about it; no, the best way I found to describe it was that the general "douchebag factor" was much higher this year. You get a lot of people in one place and put them in less-than-luxury conditions (i.e., any convention) and people either choose to be cool, mellow and understanding about it, or they choose to be douchebags... and this year, more people chose to be douchebags. It took me twenty minutes to get in and out of a booth to buy a single poster, because every time I negotiated with one or two other decent people to trade places/make a path, some douchebag would push or jump into the open space and block it again (frequently preventing the nice person who moved from getting back to where they just were). And that just doesn't make for fun. And as of Saturday night at dinner, the four of us (me, craymore, karleeneedsleep, metrophelean were all kinda feeling that that summed up this year's PAX: too much waiting, too much pushing, too much attitude, not enough fun.
Sunday, however, really kinda redeemed it. Crowds had fractionally lessened, people were in a generally better mood, and it was more like the PAX we remembered from last year. So craymore and I did leave feeling like we'd do it again next year.
Oh, I almost forgot! Man-Peach was back. There were two Dr. Horribles (one red coat, one white -- and the white carried a case of Wonderflonium). There was a nurse from Silent Hill. There were a few zombies. There was a Vivi, with glowing eyes!There was a Yuffie, and a couple characters from Devil May Cry. The cosplay contest sponsored by Hothead generated a lot of snappy 1920's costumes... and a Fruit Fucker. We saw him only briefly, rattling as he chased a bunch of shrieking convention-goers down an escalator. That was the moment, for me, that it really felt like PAX.
So overall, despite difficulties, I had fun at PAX and I'd do it again next year... but craymore and I did spend the plane ride home talking about what we'd do differently next year to maximize our fun. Among our ideas:
Home now, and glad. Catching up on LJ will take days. If I missed something important, wave, okay?
Felicia Day is very nice -- like, seriously, exceptionally nice; very friendly and personable -- and actually, kinda surprisingly, prettier than she is on film. We missed the MC Frontalot concert, but picked up his new CD the next day, and he was also very nice -- he always gives off the "I'm still a geek and deathly uncomfortable being even-sorta-kinda famous" vibe, but it comes off very cute -- Windows crashed on him while he was trying to run our card, and Front got terribly flustered about it, and was very grateful when we volunteered to just run to the ATM instead. The line for Wil Wheaton was always way too fucking long, which made me sad.
The Rock Band II demo had a line that went around the stage twice -- and most of the people who got up were really, amazingly good. (They were all playing Hard or Expert on songs they'd presumably never seen before, and doing well. By contrast, my guitar skill maxes out at a reliable Medium, and I can only manage to sing two songs on Expert.) The Guitar Hero: World Tour demo had a line about two bands deep, and it seemed that every single one played "Livin' On a Prayer", and mostly badly. Now, the GH:WT drum kit looked pretty sweet, and I kind of have to assume that there are at least a few other, equally playable songs on the list. But I still think the prospects for both games are pretty clear.
On Saturday I participated in a SingStar contest and completely mauled "Total Eclipse of the Heart" in front of probably a hundred people. I would say that it was because I couldn't hear the music, and was having to time myself based solely on the visuals -- which was true, and a big problem was how badly I got off-track based on my memory of the tempo, adjusted for nerves But in all truth, it does hit in a tricky part of my range, so I might not have done much better if I could have heard it. :-P
craymore came out the big swag winner -- they were doing comic trivia at the Champions Online booth, and he answered a question about "PS 238" to win a Champions backpack, a t-shirt, and a skateboard. We also both got all sorts of posters and shirts and postcards and temporary tattoos and other, random, completely wackass shit. We each got a Magic mousepad, and a Dragon Age tattoo sleeve (do people actually wear these things? I mean, when they're not at conventions where every other geek who sat through the demo is also wearing one?), and a fingerless glove from some gaming website we've never heard of. Adam got a metal... thing for Castle Crashers, and I got a stuffed animal from Twin Skies.
Speaking of Dragon Age: Origins, the game looks really beautiful. Warhammer Online had a really pretty trailer up. craymore is very interested in Fallout 3, but at no point were we willing to wait hours to go through the demo and jump through eight zillion hoops to get a poster or a handpuppet.
Wizards of the Coast had a well-stocked, well-attended booth. I haven't been to enough conventions to know if that was, in fact, their A game, but they did a decent job of meeting the fans and fulfilling their expectations -- in sharp contrast to, say, CCP/White Wolf, who set up a ginormous EVE booth (which you couldn't really get into, because the same people would camp out in there for days) and filled it with assholes who (except for one guy) not only could not/would not answer your White Wolf/WoD questions but were nasty about it besides. It was extra disappointing because craymore and I had been lead to expect better from past experience, and from actually meeting a CCP guy by the name of John on our way to the convention. John shared some very cramped space with us on the very full bus from the airport (he explained that everyone else from CCP had flown in the day before, but he'd stayed behind to finish up work) and we had a great conversation about gaming... and generally, we parted with the impression that if John was an example of who we'd meet from CCP, then we were in for a great experience! But no, it turns out that while John was the sort of awesome guy who'd stay late to make sure everything got covered, everyone else was exactly the sort of jerk who'd take off early and let someone else handle the cleanup. Very disappointing.
Saturday, in general, was kind of a bust. The whole experience felt more like Generic Convention X than the Penny Motherfuckin' Arcade Expo. We didn't see Gabe or Tycho once all weekend -- and now, not spotting Gabe, that's not too surprising... but Tycho was everywhere last year. Too many people. Not enough space -- and it wasn't like (what I've heard of) PAX'06, where everyone was crammed in like sardines but were generally cool about it; no, the best way I found to describe it was that the general "douchebag factor" was much higher this year. You get a lot of people in one place and put them in less-than-luxury conditions (i.e., any convention) and people either choose to be cool, mellow and understanding about it, or they choose to be douchebags... and this year, more people chose to be douchebags. It took me twenty minutes to get in and out of a booth to buy a single poster, because every time I negotiated with one or two other decent people to trade places/make a path, some douchebag would push or jump into the open space and block it again (frequently preventing the nice person who moved from getting back to where they just were). And that just doesn't make for fun. And as of Saturday night at dinner, the four of us (me, craymore, karleeneedsleep, metrophelean were all kinda feeling that that summed up this year's PAX: too much waiting, too much pushing, too much attitude, not enough fun.
Sunday, however, really kinda redeemed it. Crowds had fractionally lessened, people were in a generally better mood, and it was more like the PAX we remembered from last year. So craymore and I did leave feeling like we'd do it again next year.
Oh, I almost forgot! Man-Peach was back. There were two Dr. Horribles (one red coat, one white -- and the white carried a case of Wonderflonium). There was a nurse from Silent Hill. There were a few zombies. There was a Vivi, with glowing eyes!There was a Yuffie, and a couple characters from Devil May Cry. The cosplay contest sponsored by Hothead generated a lot of snappy 1920's costumes... and a Fruit Fucker. We saw him only briefly, rattling as he chased a bunch of shrieking convention-goers down an escalator. That was the moment, for me, that it really felt like PAX.
So overall, despite difficulties, I had fun at PAX and I'd do it again next year... but craymore and I did spend the plane ride home talking about what we'd do differently next year to maximize our fun. Among our ideas:
- DRIVE. Dear god, we are driving next year. Flying seemed like such a good idea -- it saves so much time! -- but it turned out to be more expensive than we planned, getting to and from the airport was a major hassle, being on a strict schedule caused stress, and although we don't need a car in Seattle, it would have been nice to have one. By contrast, driving may take longer, but with the car comes travel flexibility, and splitting the cost makes it so cheap (and the more people we can get to go, the cheaper it gets!) -- and frankly road trips are fun.
- Go to the keynote speech and first PA Q&A on Friday. We skipped them this year in favor of trying to get deeper into the overcrowded Expo hall. In retrospect, this was a mistake -- the keynote and Q&A really kinda set the tone in '07, and we missed that this year. The Expo hall will be there all weekend. Speaking of which...
- Avoid the Expo hall on Saturday. It's the busiest day, particularly because it's the day all the casual enthusiasts come. Douchebag factor was definitely highest that day. Exhibitors are in a bad mood, because they're so busy; swag counts drop. And there's just too much other stuff to do to make fighting that battle worthwhile. This means that...
- Saturday is the day for panels, and for naps. Waiting in line with your DS for an fascinating panel is so much less exhausting than fighting your way through a crowd of jerks to get to kinda half-peer over someone's shoulder at something that may not be well-made or interesting anyway. And if there aren't any good panels for two hours, well, that's a good sign that you should take a nap so you can be awake for the concerts. Three out of four of us were out cold and snoring before 11pm on Saturday this weekend... and I don't think that's what any of us planned on when we were thinking about this trip. Which means....
- Sunday is the day for the Expo hall. Not that Friday needs to be skipped, because that first rush is fun. But crowds are down, exhibitors are relaxed (and generous -- they don't want to pack their swag back home!) and generally it's a better experience.
Home now, and glad. Catching up on LJ will take days. If I missed something important, wave, okay?