My PAX Prime 2013 Adventures

Thursday Morning 2:45 AM CST

I woke up 1 hour early before my alarm went off. I couldn’t go back to sleep so I put my bags in the car and headed to the Atlanta Airport for PAX Prime.

Thursday 11:21 AM EST

I just got boarded on the plane and I saw people that was on the PAX Prime flight from the previous year. I saw Darren, and the Deputy Enforcer Jon. The Bit Brigade was also on Flight 1532 to Seattle. I got to sit by Jace, one of the two guitarists from the 8-Bit Brigade. I felt sleepy, but I could never fall asleep. Also I met another guy coming to PAX, Matt who flew all the way from Orlando to go to PAX Prime. During this time I was reading my Prime 12’ experiences. There was one page of me calculating, how long I had to live if I fell out of the plane and hit the ground at sea level during the 4 hour 15 minute flight last year.

When we got off the flight, Matt and I instead of walking straight out of the gate, went down the escalators, and we got a little lost. We later found the light link rail. It was nice the one way tickets were still $2.75 like last year. We talked about how many PAXses you been to, what are you looking forward to, and the insaneness of college football in the southeast. Peers back home, “Excited for college football starting this weekend!” Me “Yeah..” (Brain “PAX! PAX! PAX! PAX!)

When we arrived at Westlake Matt and I went our separate directions.

The first thing I did after checking in at the Green Tortoise Hostel was eating a burrito at Chipotle. I haven’t ate a burrito from Chipotle in 6 months. I went with a half shredded beef and half pork burrito. You can actually do that.

First TalkRadar buddies I ran into was Joe Garcia and Landon VanBuskirk. We went to Gameworks. Landon did great on the Big Reel Push game landing on the 125 and 250 ticket zones. On the Deal or No Deal game he only won 2 tickets. Not only that, the machine didn’t vend a single ticket. Landon quoted a great chinspired tweet of “Deal or No Deal, No Deal. The object of the show is to choose whether to watch Deal or No Deal.” There was a ticket game called Titanic with half of the ship being sunk, which Landon said “TOO SOON!” I said it was okay because they last Titanic survivor died 1-2 years ago. Then we talked about when we die there will be games like Hiroshima and 9/11 where you win tickets. Landon bought me an Apple Cider. I got to meet Zach Beason again at Gameworks before heading off to the Omeganaut party gathering at the TapHouse organized by Jason Dansforth.

The gathering was for Current competing Omegas, and former Omeganauts. There was Prime 11, 12, and current Omeganauts. I wore more PAX East 2011 Omeganaut shirt to the event. I was the only East Omeganaut present at the event. The organizer said the Taphouse was the best location for them to organize, since it only cost them $30 to hold a room for 3 hours. One of the Omeganauts Andrew Nguyen wished there was WWE intro music for the Omeganauts being introduced. He gave excellent insight of why Mighty Ducks 3 was a good movie and should not be dismissed. It was the first movie in the series they learned to play defense, and you can’t always have the same coach. Angela the Omegathon Enforcer, was also present at the party. This would be her 6th PAX she was an Omegathon Enforcer. 2011 East, was her first Omegathon she enforced. I got to chat with Lt. Hummus who managed to be runner up of the Prime 13’ Omegathon. Beyond Celery, the runner up of last years Omegathon was 6 months pregnant, which if you state your disability and accommodations, certain types of games will not be played in the Omegathon. She was 7 seconds away from being the Prime 12’ champion in Trials HD. It was 50 minutes of the Omeganauts failing back and forth. Breaking monotony, she had an amazing run, which the crowd went wild when she completed the stage. Unfortunately her opponent, pulled out an amazing run. Beyond Celery’s husband said the moment she completed Trials HD was insane. He said to me he has been to 9 Omegathon final rounds, and to see his wife compete was unreal. I saw the champion of the Prime 12’ Omegathon, which I recognized his face before because he was an Enforcer on the expo floor at PAX East 2013.

When I left the Taphouse it was raining hard. It was the only time it rained I was there. Back at Gameworks, I got to see Jake Petersen again and I got to meet Darryl Miller. I went back to the hostel at 7pm to eat some tacos with Jake Petersen, and Zach Beason. Eating tacos that day was the most fortunate thing that happened to me the entire weekend. A guy from the Spellbrium booth was selling a 4 Day pass at face value. I lifted my wallet up into the sky showing I meant business. He didn’t have any change, so I paid $100 for it. It was better than getting a Sunday pass for $35 and then getting a Saturday pass for $50 to $130.

After eating tacos, Joe Garcia and I, and Landon with his pals went to John John’s. John John’s was a nice little pinball, and arcade place that served alcohol. It was about .75 miles away from the hostel. Joe used the uber I got to meet Ted Rossi, Jeremy, (the guy that is always with Jeremy), Casey, Casey’s roommate Allison, and Trevarrow. Mitch Dyer, Chris Antista, Brett Elston, and other guys from IGN trickled in. At this time I’ve been up almost 20 hours straight and felt super tired. When I said this, just about every person there one upped me, on them having shitter sleep schedules. One thing about going to PAX is hearing about the behind the scenes stuff. What goes behind the twitter of the people you follow. PAX PRIME 13 YOU HAD TO BE THERE EXCLUSIVE CONTENT

I drank some Apple ciders at John John’s. After getting the 4 day badge, I showed Joe, Landon, Casey, Allison, and Chris Antista a tweet that was a draft on what I was going to do to get a Saturday badge. PAX PRIME YOU HAD TO BE THERE EXCLUSIVE CONTENT I got to tell Brett Elston how much I appreciated LaserTime Shame Songs episode 80, and told them it was the best podcast they have ever done counting TalkRadar. I got to meet his co worker Greg which was mentioned a lot on the LaserTime Episode 80 Shame songs, when they sang karaoke in Japan during TGS. After midnight Joe and I ubered back to the hostel, and I fell asleep right away.

Friday morning

Ate some pineapple, bananas, and toast at the hostel, and proceeded to the Target to buy some Gatorade and snacks. I tagged along with Kenneth DelaCruz @TechnicalFart on twitter. We got in the queue line 2 hours in advance. While walking in the queue room, I saw the one Asian girl that cosplays as a new character every day that I saw last year in the queue room for Prime. That was neat in synchronous way. The queue room was littered in Mountain Dew, Doritos, and Xbox One ads. There was a big marketing push, where they were going to have a party in the queue room Sunday night 9PM to 1AM. They were going to raffle of 6 Xbox Ones, and the people that got them would get them before the general public. They had a DJ playing 80’s rock, to snippets of PAX musical guest line up such as, The Protomen, MC Frontalot, Mega Ran Splashwoman, and Jonathon Coulton. But they really just wanted to play the pop hits, and what the KOOL KIDZ are into. Yeah because screw the videogame nerd music at a videogame convention. Anyway in the queue line everyone there just tasted an exclusive piece of the Xbox One Multi billion marketing campaign to come this upcoming holiday season.

Waiting in the queue, I made some line friends. I talked with Dustin from Vancouver, and Mark locally from the Seattle area. Mark did work at Microsoft for 3 years on the backend of the Xbox Live. Overall he viewed the Xbox One as a more powerful machine with its services compared to the PS4, and that the PS4 is marginally more powerful than the Xbox One from a hardware perspective. Also he debunked the Kinect will watch me jerk off myth. That would be a ridiculous amount of bandwidth to take thousands yet alone millions of people with their Doritos stained fingers jerking off in front of their TV’s or whatever is the new fear. 22 minutes before the expo show floor would be open there was a MC promoting the shit out of the Xbox One, Doritos, Mountain Dew event, as if there wasn’t already a dozen banners, and 10 projectors projecting Xbox One, Doritos, and Mountain Dew. The MC was talking pseudo Macho Man like with a XTREME abrasive way. He said “OPEN” which was 22 minutes before the show floor actually opened. There was no way they were going to open the show floor 22 minutes early. So the entire crowd waited another 22 minutes.

First thing I did on the show floor was look at XCOM Enemy Origins. They showed off new abilities, weapons, mechs, and enemies. Overall, I’m looking forward to the expansion, and I’m happy that XCOM is relevant in the best of ways. I walked to the Indie booth area and I got to see Lucas Pope, the creator of Papers please. He had a small card where you can stamp rejected or accepted for the paper sheet. It was really cool. I saw the creator play one of the endurance modes of his game and he got stumped in a couple of areas. I played the Wall with you game. Procedurally generated. The jumping felt floaty. I saw Audiosurf 2. Looks spectacular. It now has a new mode where the surfer gets big air by jumping the drops or heavy beats in a song. When in air, the surfer can do front and backflips to rack up a higher combo.

I went to the D3 Publisher booth to play Earth Defense Force 2025. One of the best series of this generation. Might be an overstretch, but a fun game to play. Plays a lot smoother than 2017. It will come out in North America February 2014. One the features to distinguish from the previous installment on Insect Armageddon is 4 player online co-op. I’m buying that game day one. The guy working the booth at D3, says he will be online day one playing it.

After seeing those games, I went to the How to forge a career in the game industry. The Cookie Brigade was there and I got to have something to eat in 4 hours. Where they had people in PR, Marketing, Community Management, video producer and a game journalist talking about how they got started. Most important things is initiative and networking to get in. Also important to not be an douche, since it is small industry, and people you don’t like now can be your boss in a couple years.

Right after that panel was another career panel that was focusing just on marketing. On the marketing side, they work closely with video producers, Community Managers, and PR. They are very connected. Also the stressed knowing how to interpret big data and know statistics.

After back to back panels I ate at Jimmy John’s and got a #10. I bought a lot of videogame shirts at Weartheshirts.com I got to meet Chris Ott’s aunt who was a vendor at the Off World Designs booth on the skywalk.

I got to run into my PAX East 2011 Omeganaut friend Alex Dobrian who I haven’t seen in 2.5 years. The Localization panel Q&A was informative and very funny. A lot of stories was horror stories of translations and content that would never fly in North America. One DS game with a mic a tester was paid to say as many obscene words towards Disney characters to make sure Simba or Stitch wouldn’t respond to obscenities. Another story was a Chinese MMO Age of Wushu set in the Ming dynasty. Most dialogue about women was raped, getting raped, will be raped, or in the process of getting raped. They had to change almost all the dialogue from towards women from the ground up. There was a Japanese game where goal is to shoot at bosses. The bosses are female, and their clothes come off after being shot. Then when they are defeated they do a sexy pose. The bosses were mid 20’s females except this one 9 year old, so they had to completely reskin that part of the game. There was one Chinese game with dead kids, and they can be killed, which doesn’t fly in America. The Chinese people thought it would be okay, since US is super violent in wouldn’t be a big deal. The United States is still “Think of the children”. There was another story of a EULA gone wrong with the German EULA where language was in 3rd Reich language. The German lawyers were ready to get sue. The moderator said, “3rd Reich language? was this game made by EA?”

After the Localization panel, Alex and I went to the Infamous Second Son panel. It was cool since the game takes place in Seattle, and Alex and I were in Seattle. The panel was completely full, so we had to sneak our way in. He opened up another door. I saw no Enforcers were looking at us, so I walked right in and Alex followed suit. Game Director, Animation Director, 2 voice actors Laura Bailey and Travis Willingham, and the surprise guest was Troy Baker. Troy Baker was very funny and crude. Made jokes about child labor and black dicks. Panel was moderated by Greg Miller. The Game Director said in the game “You can be good, or you can be Troy Baker.” Laura Bailey character couldn’t share much, so she just said “I play this female in the game.” After the signing I really wanted Troy Baker to sign my badge, however Troy had somewhere else to be and the only people signing badges was Billy Harper, Laura Bailey, and Travis Willingham. Having sharpies on standby made it a lot quicker for signing autographs. Billy thanked me for giving him a sharpie to sign and said he would send me a bag of Infamous swag in the mail.

Right after the Infamous Second Son Panel I went to the Game Night Panels. Saw the Blankety Blank it was very funny and crude. Fleshlights, and shit jokes galore. In between the game shows, Kyle Orland was giving prizes away to people who had the rarest and nerdyist stuff. Kyle Orland asked one kid what was his most valuable card, and one guy blurted out v-card. It was 50/50 oooohh, and laughs. Might have been too close to home. Anyway it was an excellent burn. 1st game of Jeopardy, Will Smith, Brett Elston, and Chris Kohler were contestants. Chris Kohler cleaned house.

2nd round, Landon was a contestant for Jeopardy. He didn’t know until afterwards the entire panel was streamed online. Otherwise he would have been completely failed under the pressure. Andrew Edgarton won. He was a beast. Landon looked so sly when he answered the Michael Keaton Chick Hicks Cars question. People couldn’t believe he didn’t know the charity of Penny Arcade, which shows how big the convention is, and how tertiary the comic strip and charity are to the convention..

After attending 6 panels in a row I wanted to get something to eat at Jimmy John’s only to know that most fast food places close at 8pm. Friday night I went to the Paramount theater to meet up with Kenneth for the concerts. When I arrived I saw the beginning of Mega Ran. There was one guy Phil. He saw Brett Elston and was like “Let me introduce you to Brett Elston. Are you a fan of TalkRadar?” I said to him “I’m a fan of TalkRadar.” I later told him I was TURbo and he was “HOLY SHIT!” Brett Elston saw this magical moment happen in front of his very eyes. Phil said to me, look behind you. I looked no big deal. He told me to look behind again. It was Kenji Inafune the creator of Mega Man.

The Protomen concert was amazing. I was 25 feet from the main stage. So much energy. There was one guy Steve and his girlfriend Timber. His girlfriend name was easy to remember because her parents did a lot of drugs. There was also a big guy 6’8’’ 260+ that was drunk and moving all over the place. During one of the Protomen songs he grabbed Steve and started humping him and he just stood there paralyzed in horror. Steve looked like he was 5’ 7’’ 140 lbs. What could he do? After the concerts I went back to the hostel and fell asleep right away.

Saturday Morning

Woke up ate some pineapples, bananas, and a PBJ sandwich at the hostel before buying drinks at Target. During the queue the Mountain Dew MC was there. Part I remembered most of Friday was Skrillex remix of Avicii's Levels playing whiling seeing Xbox One, Doritos, and Mountain Dew in all directions. Main difference was the projectors rotated on screens, so the Mountain Dew, Xbox One, and Doritos screens were not stationary in the queue room. The queue room was graced by Geoff Knighley’s presence.

First thing I did when the show floor open was super speed walked to the Xbox One area, which the first thing I got in line for was Battlefield 4, running on the PC, with Xbox One controllers. The Xbox One controllers feels nice. Battlefield 4 was visually impressive. I was spawned in a boat and I went back and forth shooting guys from 100 of meters away. The maps were large. Overall I got to play it for about 10 to 15 minutes. It plays well, but I’m not interested nor do I play a lot of contemporary military shooter multiplayer.

When I was lounging around the Machinima area, a guy asked me to try out the F2P Blacklight. He was like you play FPS? I was like somewhat, downplaying how much I play. The screen was a little ghosty. I started getting a kill streak which I redeemed for a mech, which completely made it game breaking. Anyway my team won. F2P games look a lot nicer than they were 5 years ago, but I have no interest spending hours in a F2P game.

After seeing Battlefield 4 and walking around the convention center I went to Jimmy Johns and ate my 2nd #10 Hunters Club. I ate one yesterday. I didn’t feel full after eating a foot long sub sandwiches. Anyway I proceeded to walk back to the convention center until I saw Zach Beason and for the first time at Prime 13, Mikel Reparaz on crutches. They said they were going to Jimmy John’s, which I proceeded to show them where it was and I decided to eat another #10. I could only eat 8 of the 12 inches before stopping. I got Mikel Reparaz to sign Golden Axe Beast Rider for a friend, and he wanted to understand the rationale. I told him a friend back home got into TalkRadar and just about bought any shitty game mentioned on TalkRadar that had its 5 minutes, and was under $9.99 in the used bargain bin at Gamestop. Brett did tell the 2 TalkRadar fans meet each other for the first time story to Mikel from last night, when I told Mikel what I did at PAX.

After downing 20 inches of sub in a 20 minute period I slowly walked to the XCOM Panel on the Sheraton hotel. At the Sheraton, 25 minutes later I finished the remaining of the sandwich. Lying on the carpet on the Sheraton to pass time felt so good. When I was writing down all the experiences up to this point I ran into Phil from the concerts from last night. Also there I saw a person wearing a LaserTime shirt, which I said hi to him.

Waiting at the XCOM line, an enforcer shouted “NO DASHING” which a person in line blurted out “A Good XCOM never dashes.” During the wait, I had a excellent experience talking about XCOM Enemy Unknown 1994, and the new one with people in line. At the panel the first 200 people got exclusive XCOM Enemy Within posters for free. I got to sit near the front row. They showed off a 20 minute game, highlighting the new enemies, powers, and weapons. The gave a standing ovation to Mike Aruciao, a guy that 100% all the achievements in Xbox 360, and iOS. Owns all the versions of the game except the PS3. They gave him a muton figurine.

After the panel I tagged along with Landon at Gameworks, where we wasted credits, not getting any luck on the ticket games. I was going to assemble a kick ass trivia team, but was canceled due to the GamesRadar, PC Gamer meetup which a lot of people attended.

We met up at 8PM. It became a group of 40+ people. I saw Hollander Cooper there for the first time. I saw Keenan Weaver who I knew on the internet for the past 4 years in person. Saw a lot of people that day. I also got to say hi to Tyler Nagata and told him about the Kimiki Q arcade story and beating all of PC Gamer at Starcraft II tournament TalkRadar stories to engage is his memory. While a bit strange, for people I’ve known for years but never met in person, I use a TDar tidbit to jog their memories. He has a good smile and laugh. For beating PC Gamer at Starcraft II He was like “Not too loud, there’s a lot of people from PC Gamer here.” Saw Rhys Edgar for the first time. Hollander Cooper encouraged me to listen to RadioRadar. First time I saw Ryan Taljonick since PAX East 2012. At the WSCC floor, there was a guy dressed as one character in Earthbound, Ness. Anyway he had a sign that said free twerks. I told Landon to hold my bag while to counter twerk him. We both ended up twerking. I had more range of movement in twerk. He stopped twerking 10 seconds in after realizing, that I was twerking on him. The Gameworks was busy at first so we decided to go to the Taphouse. When we told them a group of 40, they said it was not possible, so we went to Gameworks, where we got drunk.

At Gameworks I showed Anne, the picture of Anne the cow she didn’t like in VidjaGame Apocalypse. I made her remember things she didn’t want to see again. I laughed, and the other people around thought it was funny. She left it on the ground, for someone else to horrible pick up and look at. I drank 1 Long Island Ice Tea, then I drank 2. I talked to Keenan Weaver at Gameworks. He got his badge signed by his favorite game designer Chris Roberts.

When it was 15 minutes till at Gameworks, there was a notification on the intercom that all under 18 year olds had to be out in 15 minutes. During the intercom was going on I shouted “GET THE FUCK OUT!” Looking at it at the time, the +18 more rowdy than the kids could ever be. When it was 10PM I was on my 2nd long island Ice Tea and Gameworks started playing some EDM. I was like fuck yes Swedish House Mafia Greyhound and I started dancing. They also played Yelle’s Que Veux Tu remix by Madeon. I was having an amazing time. Then I went down and got my 3rd long Island Ice Tea. Which was smart, because I left my debit card there. After buying my 3rd, I made sure to put my debit card in my wallet. When I was dancing I bumped into one guy just trying to walk through and he looked a bit upset. Whatever. I ran into Jason Dansforth who I saw earlier at the Taphouse on Thursday. We talked about our fun PAX experiences. He was eating bacon pepperoni pizza. In my journal I wrote down eating pepperoni pizza only to realize later he was eating it and I never did eat any of his. On my way up already half way done with my 3rd Long Island Ice Tea, I felt the stairs more jittery. I noticed the huge differences going from 2 to 3 Long Island Ice Teas. Walking around wasn’t as smooth. Going up the stairs felt like a shakycam.

I saw Gabe Grazini and talked about Assassins Creed III, and Assassins Creed IV Black Flag. I told him the story in ACIII was the best in any Assassins’ Creed game but some of the main missions were very linear and the stealth wasn’t that well implemented. I saw Jeremy Acker and his silent friend Craig at the meetup at Gameworks. To the side he told me that I should not be proud, or make known getting drunk on Long Island Ice Teas and said I should have said beers or something less sissy I assume. Landon and I were dancing on and off at our time at Gameworks. I got to speak to AJ Glasser and Shaun McInnis, 2 interns formerly of GamesRadar. Gabe Grazini at one point worked at GamesRadar, which is pretty cool how many people that cover games worked at GR at one point in their careers.

During the night when I talked about handjob, churcheswife was condescending saying handjobs is for middle schoolers, and they are not in the big leagues. If Casey ever heard a girl talk about giving a handjob she would shame her.

After drinking my 3rd Long Island Ice Tea, I just drank water for the rest of the night. When Gameworks started to close we went to the Taphouse. On the way to the Taphouse I started talking a lot to Greg from Capcom. We talked about id software, their early FPSes, and how much videogame development has changed the past 20 years. Then it branched off into family and culture, and he had a grandmother that could speak Yiddish. While he couldn’t speak it, did pick up on some customs, and said same with my Asian mother while not fluent in Chinese, more aware of the customs. The Taphouse stopped serving food and Greg was hungry. I still had a Twix in my backpack and we split a Twix.

At the Taphouse I saw Jessica Brohard and said hi to her, and said she was #1 in the first round of Beautiful Katamari. I went on for at least 20 seconds because when I was done talking I don’t know my group went. When I met up with my group Landon, Kevin, Chris Antista and I were talking about Ryan Davis and his contributions. Chris Antista said the reason why you got into TalkRadar was the videogames and then you stayed for the personalities. Landon got into Giant Bomb due to TalkRadar 29, with Jeff Gerstmann as a special guest talking why he thought Mortal Kombat vs. DC was a great game. Landon decided to hang with us compared to the Giant Bomb panel because for this meetup he would be an active partcipant than just being a spectator among the thousands in the crowd.

When Taphouse closed, we went outside and we continued chatting. I got my pictures taken with Tyler Wilde and Anne Lewis after 2AM. Anne Lewis said she wasn’t on a TalkRadar episode which I said she was on TalkRadar E3 2011 Day one podcast talking about Hitman Absolution and went to the Sega Sonic party. Then Anne remembered.

I got to go to bed that night at 2:25 AM Sunday Morning.

Sunday Morning

I woke up and it was 6:51AM. Jesus, I did a lot of shit last night and roughly got 4.5 hours of sleep. Instead of going to the queue line I went to the Hyatt and waited for Alex to go to the Top House Donuts. Waiting I heard Enforcers talk about the Kickstarter panel which they said it wasn’t very good. “It was assembled last minute.” “You mean like Kickstarter?” What I heard was the panel was centered about the most 3 generic games that gets Kickstarted all the time. Which he wanted to go since it was ranked as one of the best donut stores on the West Coast. On the way to the get donuts we talked about our PAX experiences. He went to the keynote panel that had Peter Molyneux as a guest. He said it was the worst developer keynote he saw at PAX. Cliffy B, at PAX East for his keynote talked about his career as a designer as a kid to present day, while Molyneux used 80% of the time to promote his new game. On the way I talked about I was going to attend the panel on Awesome Videogame Data by the president of EEDAR. He told me that Halo Combat Evolved, MS forced them to have a subtitle because games with subtitles sell more than those that don’t. Due to how successful Halo was, Bungie could call Halo 2, Halo 2 with no subtitle and became the greatest selling game on Xbox. He asked me what I liked about Halo, and I said the setting, and as a child how open the levels were compared to other FPSes, at the time and the vehicle segments. Besides having fun Alex asked me important questions what I wanted to do with my life. I responded with working on the business side of videogames, which he encouraged me to apply to companies in Seattle.

David Rhinehart from Geekenstein media needed someone to be the video guy because Jake Petersen was busy playing Magic Cards. I was going to a only open for the press event demo for Fantasia. I got in while not having a media badge because David needed me. Man the Xbox One builds have a far way to go to be consumer ready. John Drake, Head of PR at Harmonix was trying to present Fantasia, the Kinect mic, tried to go to the main dashboard. The Xbox One at least has a 5 second delay so you can say “Dismiss” so it doesn’t go straight to dashboard after hearing a sound. John Drake said dismiss during the presentation more than any other word. It took 15 minutes before the game could be demoed. He made some jokes about the Kinect mic being always on, and somewhere Don Mattrick is laughing right now. When the game was loading John Drake said “You are now watching next gen loading screens!” David got a interview with the creative director of for the Fantasia game.

After the event, I tagged along with Joe Garcia. He was going to eat at a burger joint Lil’ Woody’s. I was fine since I ate a Jimmy John’s #10. That was my 4th so far at PAX Prime 13. I chuckled inside when Joe said “I’d like to order a Big Woody.”

After chatting with Joe, I went to the Nerdcore Hip hop panel. Before the nerdcore hip hop panel I got to run into Phil again. He didn’t attend Saturday nights concerts. We played Cards Against Humanity. I entered in some contest to get some free swag not knowing what it was. It was who can beatbox. I had no voice, so I just made laser pew pew sounds. I manage to win the swag because, Phil and his group of 6 cheered super loud thus I got the most applause. I got a lot of special CAH Prime cards. I got to see Beefy for the first time and after the panel said I liked his work and his work with ytcracker. And he said it’s weird that ytcracker now has really long hair past his shoulders. At the nerdcore panel, the moderator said Ice-T twitter, he does mention videogames a lot which MC Frontalot replied “Why is Ice-T in my space?” It was an okay panel, but not much different from the panel I attended at East 2013 about nerdcore.

The panel right after was Awesome Videogame Data hosted by the president of EEDAR. That was a really cool presentation showing and discussing the trends of where videogames are heading. Overall the videogame industry as a whole is growing, just there has been a lot of contracting in the physical areas. Also the in game advertising displays at Gamestop has doubled in the past 3 years for blockbuster games. Due to the increase of smartphones and tablets, the average age of a person that plays videogames has fallen by 3 to 4 years. Games series that are well known, more than 80% of their mentions are in comparison to other games, than directly. Also when games are compared, the more known series is 95% certain to be compared positively. He said that games that get paid off for positive review scores happens occasionally in mobile games, and not possible for mass marketed games. Regardless what people about saying they want novel, new games, isn’t true. Also the President as a former developer said it was heartbroken inside that a game that is bad with great marketing will statistically outdo a game that is great game but poorly marketed.

I went to the Cards Against Humanity panel. The CAH panel was a 90% tribute to Ryan Davis. There was some good ideas from the crowd. Slide whistle in the middle of Nagasaki was dark. One guy didn’t find it that amazing, while another said Nagaski is underrated like the Scottie Pippen of nuke blasts. At the panel they order pizza for 500 people so 64 pizzas, 8 slices a pizza with 2 pieces leftover.

When the CAH panel was finished, Alex and I went to the concerts to check what was going on. It looked liked MC Frontalot, only up close it wasn’t. Anyway the main floor looked very empty. For the 2 minutes I was there, I saw that one Asian girl again I saw last year in the queue line and in the Blockbuster Videogame Music Composer last year. Anyway Alex and I parted ways, and I walked back to the hostel to go to bed.

Monday Morning

I ate some pineapple, bananas, and toast like the previous 3 days. I went with Kenneth to Target to buy some snacks and drinks before going into the convention center. I waited at the queueline. When it started I try to go to the Titanfall booth. It was completely packed. Already a line 200+ plus and the queue line only been open for 5 minutes. Titanfall was the game of the show. Everyone that got to play Titanfall said the controls were so “good, fluid, tight, feel, inituitave” Andy Bauman or some other person I heard at the PC Gamer meetup said “Titanfall is going to sell a lot of (Xboxses) Xbox Ones” I got to play The Crew. Man that game is huge. The controls were fine for an arcade game. I can see myself just cruising trying to drive on all the streets at least once in that game. For lunch I had a Chipotle Burrito. At PAX I had 5 feet of Jimmy John’s #10 subs and almost 3 feet of Chipotle Burritos.

After eating I headed directly to the PC Gamer panel queue line, where I ran into Andrew Edgarton the champion of the Game Show Night Jeopardy. Landon tagged along. Later Landon and Joe were in line. I saw Tyler Wilde, Anne Lewis, and some of the people from PC Gamer, GamesRadar. In line a guy said who is that 15 year old girl? I said she is 23. Tyler Wilde asked for our names for Catfantastic with a chance from being called from the audience to participate. Landon said something to Tyler to make him upset. He had -100 points. Landon was like “Is it like golf with the lowest score?” I said to Tyler “No mulligans here.” Tyler said “I like your thinking, +100 points for you.” In the swagbags everyone got a copy of Red Orchestra 2 and $70 Turtle Beach Earforce buds for free. One of the questions I got correct was name 1 of 3 games that tied with the highest review scores. I was like name all 3 or just 1. I said Half Life 2.. I got a TF2 scout plush. The final secret prize was a way to preorder Half Life 3 was a partial truth. They raffled a Steam Account that got all the Valve games in past and future for free. The question was guess the total value of 1148 games on PC Gamer steam account if you bought them today. Landon got a limited special Duck Tales lunch box by answerings Hollander Coopers question “Who wrote the Rift preview in 2011 in PC Gamer?” Everyone was stumped but Landon said “Hollander Cooper?” Landon was correct and got the lunchbox and Tyler Wilde okayed the question. Zach Beason said to Landon right after winning was dude I’ll pay you for it, I’m going to get laid. Landon replied “You have a wife.” Zach Responded “My wife is into Duck Tales.”

Monday at 4:30 PM I got Chris Antista to sign my friends copy of Golden Axe Beast Rider which he couldn’t believe why I wanted that game signed. Also I saw @theawesomecard at the Capcom booth who I saw at Gameworks Saturday night. She confused me for a different party she was at where she got super drunk. I went to Jimmy Johns and ate my 5th sub before coming back to the Capcom booth and having Elston sign my friends copy of Golden Axe Beast Rider. Capcom had great wifi which I use to download LaserTime podcasts on the show floor. Brett Elston for him considers TDar198 his most favorite podcast of the bunch. It just ended abruptly. There was no 200, nor was it good for a 199 episode. He said “TalkRadar everyone’s 3rd favorite gaming podcast” At the Capcom booth saw Casey, and Dan Amrich. Brett first thing when signing Golden Axe Beast Rider was “Why?” I told him about my friend Chris who I introduced to TDar, and has tried out just about any game that got discussed on TDar for more than 5 minutes. It could be shitty as long as it was under $9.99. When Landon talked about looking forward to next gen, I was like “DUDE WE ARE NEXT GEN ALREADY. WII-U.” Chris Antista was like yes, get with the program. I started signing the chorus to Alien Ant Farm’s Movies to Landon, which Antista was like “That song sounds familiar.” Then he backhanded insulted me with “You made it sound so good I didn’t know forgot the original for a second.” something along those lines.

I said my goodbyes to Chris Antista, and Brett Elston and started walking to back to the hostel to drop off my stuff. Joe, Landon, and I walked to the apartment Landon was staying at. When we got to the apartment, Landon had to wait 25 minutes because his friend was in a Final Fantasy dungeon. When his friend came out and said that reason, Landon was like “I understand.” When Landon went inside, Joe and I proceeded to do the first tourist thing all weekend which was go up the Space Needle.

At the Space Needle area was also the Bumbershoot music festival. Joe and I got tickets for $18 a piece, and went up the Space Needle. It was neat seeing all around Seattle. Seeing the Seattle skyline, the stadiums, docks, hills, and mountains at sunset. After the space needle, Joe and I ate at a Mexican restaurant. We were full. Afterwards we walked back to the hostel. I was like must be like midnight. 10:23 PM? After landing in the hostel I tagged along with Zach, David, and Jake to get some beer. It took them 25-30 minutes to decide on what beer to get, and that’s when I started getting really tired.  

I went back to the hostel. Joe and I were tweeting our experiences of PAX and visiting the space needle. Felt surreal since person was tweeting right next to me, and PAX is the only 3 to 4 days a year where I see them in person. I convinced Joe to look up Craigslist missed connections during PAX to see if there was some funny/sad/creepy posts. I only got the idea because of Aubrey Norris mentioned it after one PAX this year or last year.

Back in the room, Kenneth and Joe were checking up on their streetpass. Which they said they would pay $250 for a 3DS that had unlimited Streetpass functionality.

I went to bed easy. There was one guy rooming with us all the way from Perth, Australia to attend the Bumpershoot music festival. Around midnight he said he was trying to sleep, since the others were making a lot of noise.

I woke up early in the morning and went with Jake to the Westlake station for the light link rail. I said goodbye while he left to go to the airport. I waited for Landon, and rode to the airport with Landon. We are in the boat the Call of Duty is a solid FPS series. We had breakfast in the airport. Eating at the airport, the guy in front of us was the CM at Naughty Dog. That was pretty neat. Also I saw Dan Amrich and got to say goodbye to him as he boarded his flight.

I still had another 2 hours until my flight came, so I hanged out with Landon until I went to my gate. At my gate I saw a lot of people going to PAX Prime I haven’t seen since boarding the flight to Seattle. I saw Darren and his 2 friends he brought with him. I saw Matt, the guy I sat next to on the flight to Seattle. I also saw the Bit Brigade again. When I landed back in Atlanta, getting ready to walk back home I saw the gate I departed from Atlanta, and couldn’t believe that 5 and a half days flew by.

PAX Prime 2013 was an amazing experience.