PAX Day 1
The first report from the floor of the first annual Penny Arcade Expo
Tags: Penny Arcade Expo Categories: Features, GBA Features, Game Cube Features, PC Features, PS2 Features, Tech Features, Xbox Features
Posted by Daniel "monk" Pelfrey on Aug 28th, 2004
The Penny Arcade Expo is in full swing, and gamers couldn’t be happier. It’s even been noticed that a couple of videogame publishers are failrly pleased as well.
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The day started out with a throng of people waiting to get inside the Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue, Washington. An approximation would place the number at around 2000 – possibly more. The setup was fairly simple with the entrance and registration/check-in on the second floor (street level), the theater behind the registration tables, and escelators leading up (or down) to the 4th and 1st floors in very close proximity to the entrance. It was obvious from the start that the whole of the facillity was not used, with many rooms vacant throughout, which caused a bit of crowding. Next year, this should be remedied. Plans are already afoot for this to become an annual event.
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The first floor held the tabletop gaming. There were set ups for various types of games to be played, from Dungeons and Dragons (3.5 edition of course) to newer mech oriented miniature styled games, with several offerings inbetween. Just before the crowd was let in, the place almost looked as if it were an afterthought – something akin to “Oh, I suppose we’ll have something for those kinds of gamers as well.” but that just wasn’t the case.
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After a few hours, I wandered down to the tabletop gaming area and talked with Rachel who was running the show down there. Tables were full to capacity with a copious amount of overflow. The problem she said was that it was hard finding people to volunteer for the entire time. It would be nice to be able to have a continous D&D game going on, but there just wasn’t enough space and manpower. There were plenty of volunteers helping PAX run smoothly, but for an event of this size to run as long as it is, requires a lot of people to be actively involved.
The console room (on the 4th floor of the Meydenbauer Center) was a wasteland before the doors officially opened. While everything was getting set up for Halo, a few people who did manage to sneak in somehow were able to get first dibs on the “first come first served” sign ups for the various tournaments that were being held throughout the weekend. The first – for Halo – started very shortly after the doors opened.
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During the tournaments themselves, it was hard to get in the door, let alone move around the room. Clearly, more of the faciltiy needed to be used – and will next year. Then again, next year, more people will most likely show up.
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There are various panels being held throughout the day in the second floor theater, the first being a “State of the Industry” panel with Microsoft’s Andre Vrignaud, Vlad Ceraldi from Radical Entertainment and Jeff Kalles from Nintendo (left to right in the photo). The panel was moderated by Penny Arcade’s Robert Khoo. In between jabs at each other (good natured and respectful – for the most part) there wasn’t much in the way of relevation. The three were asked and talked on a variety of subjects ranging from what the industry has or hasn’t done right recently to why did the industry crash and what can be done to prevent it from happening again.
Perhaps the biggest point made was that the videogame industry is becoming more mainstream as an entertainment option. More and more people are spending less time watching television and more time playing games. Costs of development are going up as the technology grows and gamers demand more from their games (some titles hitting as much as $10 million) and publisher can go under if they take too many risks. The annoying holiday schedule is another factor, and it appears that many publishers are aware that games need to be spread out throughout the year more. A recession can come, but people will always want to be entertained – and with videogames becoming a much more “mainstream” option, ecenomic downturns will hit the industry as a whole less and less – though smaller publishers will die off, and larger ones will have the ability to “maintain” (by not spending as much on innovation) and survive.
Of course Gabe and Tycho (Mike and Jerry in real life) were wandering around and signing pretty damn near everything that was thrust in front of them – when they had time. They were busy helping to actually run the event instead of just hang out at some location and sign stuff for an hour, so sightings became an event.
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One young lad had a fan drawing that he handed to the guys, and was absolutely awestruck that they not only accepted it, but did so gladly. As Mike started to work on a quick sketch for him, his eyes grew ever wider. About 10 seconds after this picture was snapped, he held out his hand and said in a shaky voice “Dude… just… touch me.” While there was no touching (perhaps thankfully, on everybody’s part), the two men that seem to have gathered one of the largest followings – perhaps despite their best efforts – within the videogame community were more than happy to spend a few seconds to give back.
There were cardboard tubes being signed left and right, posters, various bits of paper – you name it. There was also a large selection of shirts and other Penny Arcade parephenalia on sale as well.
But the big highlight for many was the exhebition hall, where there were several game companies showing off their wares – some of which are still yet to come out.
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UbiSoft had a large setup with Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six 3: Black Arrow set up for multiplyaer tournaments on 10 Xboxes. Prince of Persia: Warrior Within was being shown, albeit in video form only – as was Brothers in Arms. Myst IV: Revelation was on hand for people to get their hands on with a couple of computers. Perhaps the biggest titles though were Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon 2 and Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory on two screens each with representatives on hand to demo the game.
Brady Games was on hand giving away Soul Calibur II guides. NCSoft was there with Guild Wars available to play. It appeared as if there were 4 machines running the title, but I couldn’t get in to actually see, the crowd was so thick. Nvidia was on hand with a couple of machines running Doom 3 – naturally the line for that was really long. Monolith was there with a few PCs running the first open trial for the Matrix Online as well. Vivendi Universal was on hand showing Men of Valor on two Xboxes, and a couple of table top companies were in there (Privateer Press and Sabretooth Games).
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Microsoft had by far the largest presence however. There were 4 Xboxes running Fable in what looked like the final version (of course the game has gone gold, so there isn’t any reason for it not to be). There were 2 machines running Jade Empire – though it was the same build as presented at E3 earlier this year. Dungeon Siege II was also present on a couple of PCs.
There were three stations running Forza Motorsport, with one of them having a setup of three televisions presenting a rather wide view of the track. It was possible to just go it alone, but the three Forza Xboxes were routinely linked up to have some multiplayer action. While this title didn’t have the same crowds waiting to get their hands on the controllers, everybody that did walked away satisfied with the performance of the game – and not just the graphics either.
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Conker: Live and Reloaded was on 10 Xboxes, with some single and multiplayer – it switched out throughout the day. Mechassault 2: Lone Wolf was also playable on 8 screens with both single player and multiplayer as well. There was a steady stream of people lined up to play – no shortage of eager gamers wanting to try out what look to be some of the best titles to come this year. Other publishers should have taken Penny Arcade up on this oportunity.
While this was the bulk of the expo, it does continue tomorrow – complete with Halo 2. While I wasn’t able to attend all the events (the line for the Red vs. Blue showing in the theater was HUGE – just look at the crowd above the tabletop gaming – photo above – and that’s less than 1/4 of the line) it is the nature of these sorts of things to miss out on certain portions. Tomorrow brings a new day, and more gaming goodness, thanks to Gabe and Tycho.
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Tags: Penny Arcade Expo
Posted by Daniel "monk" Pelfrey on Aug 28th, 2004 and is filed under Features, GBA Features, Game Cube Features, PC Features, PS2 Features, Tech Features, Xbox Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
