PAX East 2014
Thursday Morning
This was the first time I traveled to PAX with someone. When I picked up my friend Chris Ott, the first song I played in the car to the airport was Helix Nebula by Anamanaguchi. This was deliberately planned. In the Atlanta airport a TSA agent said “Commander Shepard over here.” I was wearing a N7 shirt. While waiting to board to go to Boston, I got 25 streetpasses at the Atlanta airport. It was huge, since I finally had an Army to whoop some ass in Warrior’s Way.
Thursday Night
I went to the Pizzeria to meet some online friends. Landon was the first person to notice me. I got to speak to Addison @akd, Robert @23Breach, Cole, Curtis @zabu_san, Stephen @ShanghaiSix, Dylan @Phazon117, Bree, and Travis @turbobison. For Travis I questioned his 1st place Black Power Ranger doing the Black Power pose, as an homage to the 1968 Long Jump, since there was 2 Black guys that did the Black Power pose. There should have been 2 Black Rangers and not just 1.
Friday morning
I arrived in the queue line early at 7:40AM. What made this one nice, was they let people in before 8 AM. Chris and I got in a line the was 5 times shorter than the other lines, since the pillar was hid the line. The bag check was really quick. They didn’t check every zipper. It was basically a clearly a 7 quart pressure cooker isn’t in the bag, you can go through.
In the queue line I got to use my 3DS XL and streetpass and get tens upon tens of streetpasses at a time. It made the queue line wait go by faster, but I felt becoming less engaged and talking to people. I stopped so I could hit the beach balls in the queue line. I barely read the physical guidebook. When I was standing up clearing streetpasses, I ripped a fart that had some noise and I got a guy behind me just heard a smigedon and stood up. Man his face was cringing and he stood up within 2 seconds. I felt like I fucked up bigtime in a way but he played it cool, but deep down he knew he got face farted less than 2 feet away.
For the beachballs, people near me started catching them and draw giant penises in Sharpie. Not only they drew penises there was random numbers associated with them like “If you want a good time.” The ball that had multiple penises drawed on it came back to our section multiple times. It was funny, seeing the beachball with the penises doing, crazy spins when it was being hit all across the queue line.
When the queue line opened, I got to demo Sniper Elite III and Wolfenstein New Order. Wolfenstein played well. For Wolfenstein they gave away Wolfenstein Bags. Sniper Elite III looked great on PS4, and a lot of the issues of Sniper Elite V2 were resolved. Sniper Elite III expected to release this July 1, 2014. I got a Sniper Elite III poster.
I saw Willy randomly while walking the show floor in the Indie Megabooth. I got to meet Alex, and gave a giant donation to his Random Assault podcast.
Went to the PC Gamer panel. It was ok. They started wanted everyone to rise from their seats for the PC Gaming anthem. They played Doom E1M1 a screen with a American flag waving gif said videogames. All Willy could say was slightly more interesting than I thought it would be. Saw Tyler Wilde there he saw me but no conversation. I had no idea Palmer Luckey the creator of Oculus VR was only 21 years old. Didn’t like the random guy in the audience that shouted traitor when he was introduced. I streetpassed as much as I possibly could at the PC Gamer panel. Must have gotten about 50 streetpasses there.
I had my first real meal at 2PM. I had a shitty $5 cheeseburger. After eating lunch Chris and I chilled at the handheld gaming lounge. From 2 to 6:30 Chris and I cleared streetpasses. Willy later joined and did a mix of Pokemon and streetpassing. Some time later Alex joined us. It was just a new group of streetpassers. The fact there was a barrage of people from the PAX Pokemon league and other handheld tournaments provided a constant influx of new people to streetpass with. There was only 1 time I didn’t get 10 streetpasses. Friday I went streetpass crazy going from 25 tags to over 500. The Pedometer on the 3DS can verify my streetpassing for 3 hours. NOT ONE STEP. One of the best things I brought was a power bar to charge my and a friends devices. There was one person from Alaska that I streetpassed with which every 10 minutes there was some guy in the background saying “Thanks Alaska!” Thing I remembered most streetpassing that time was Willy saying. “I snore like I fart. Out the ass.”
Friday Night
After Streetpassing in the handheld lounge for 3 hours, I went to the gameshow night panel where once again I streetpassed as much as I could. During the streetpassing Willy would not have opposite sex with Alex because touching a womens penis is disgusting.The only thing that prevented me from streetpassing was the draining battery life. Alex got to be a contestant on Dan Amrich’s Game Show Night Jeopardy. It was brutally fast. Alex had no chance and the other people were so quick. For painful obvious person missed what was the game title of Oni when it was released. He said Marathon and the entire room sighed. The last question was What is blue, collect rings, and goes really fast. He would have accepted Danky Kang as an answer. Alex missed out on a Mortal Kombat 3 question, because he didn’t give his 100% Bergers. Next time I attend a PAX Game Show Night I will give a special gift for Blankety Blank. He should have gotten $2300.
Saturday Morning
Instead of going to the queue line right away I walked around the convention center before it got busy. First time I ever did that at East.
I went to the FirAxis panel where the revealed the Civilization Beyond Earth, and there I still did some streetpassing.
2:30PM I went to the EEDAR Awesome Video Game Data. He calls it awesome because it shows up earlier in the alphabetically by name. He shared about the gender breakdown and how it is reaching parity. The dilemma free to play games have with 5% responsible for 50% of the revenue and the other 95% for the 50% of the revenue. People who are willing to spend more on mobile games are people who already spend lots of money on all other games. The top 3-4 games in any market rake in 50+% of all revenue. Also he quoted that 12.5% 1/8 of all retail games bring in 75% of the revenue. While mobile has some success stories there is a huge signal to noise ratio with thousands of games released on the app store each year. He also gave great news that actually more games as a whole for the 7th generation consoles are having less multiplayer than in previous years. Multiplayer is good for a game if the multiplayer is really good. However there is just less AAA releases in general compared to previous years to explain for the drop. A point he brought up about single player gaming is it is a new phenomenon is the history of humanity in relation to games. Chess, checkers, tag, cards, all have elements of multiplayer, and in the beginning stages of game development the technology wasn’t there to make good multiplayer games.
After the panel I went to meet the Known Griefers Blog TalkRadar fans, Pat, Chris, and Rock. We went to the classic arcade section and they played Ghost Busters. We had conversations on what we’ve seen and so forth. For the Mass Effect related stuff, I said there will be a person “Hey I had sex with your character in Mass Effect” I showed them about Sniper Elite III, and they loved it. They played so far in, a guy from 505 games said whoa you were not supposed to play that. “Leaked reveal there is a mission you play during night time.” After they were done playing a little kid under 10 years old started playing it.
After hanging out with them I met up with Chris Ott again and went to go to the 2K party. The Empire Restaurant was a fancy smancy Asian restaurant. They had $15 to $20 appetizers. The party was for the first 250. It was free drinks and free food. It was $100 of food and drinks for free. 2K had an open bar for the entire night. While drinking the mixed drinks, they weren’t that alcoholic, and the long wait line to get another drink ensured your liver enough time to detoxify for another round. PAX Attendees were under dressed. They had a bathroom attendant. Alex wanted to know if the Bathroom Attendant would wipe the piss off his dick. Leaving the restroom there was a drunk guy saying I was the guy from Hong Kong and then the group of friends said I was in his group from Hong Kong. At the 2K party I got to meet Josiah, and he was previously at the Bethesda Party. I got to drink all 4 mixed drinks. The SpaceWalk was bad. I couldn’t eat any more food after that. The Spacewalk was like drinking vomit.
After the 2K party we foolishly embarked on a journey to the PC Gamer ASUS Republic of Gamers AfterParty at the Estate. The walk to get there was a lot of fun. Lot of jokes cracked along the way. For the 3DS pedometer. It was the only time I got 4000 steps in 1 hour. When we arrived at the Estate. It was a line of 4,000+ people snaking 2 blocks long for a venue that can only hold 800 people. Next to the Estate was another club of people waiting in line who were clearly in the night club scene. There was a couple of people who walked out of the Estate too well dressed. Willy said “The jokes on you you went to the wrong club.” After seeing a 2 block long line, I called it a day and went back to the apartment.
When I was about to sleep that night I felt like I was going to throw up and also Chris Ott was snoring very loud. It was horrible. Like he was trying to clear his nose while snoring. He always beat me to going to sleep.
Sunday Morning
I went to the queue line. I waited in line next to 2 guys in their early 30’s that were lifelong friends. One guy said he loves the NVIDIA shield because having a wife and kid hard to play on PC so just plays on shield. One bad thing Sunday was the queue lines were all leaving at once regardless of what line lined up first.
First thing I went to see was the Ocolus VR. I was the last person in line before the cutoff. The person in front of me was didn’t shower and the person behind me had a 1500 google glass.The demo was couch knights. The VR headtracking worked very well. It was short. It took me an hour to wait and to leave. My 3DS had no battery which was good because I could do other stuff besides clear notifications all the time.
I went to the Mass Effect signing line to have my games signed by the voice actors/face models but the line went nowhere. While waiting I talked about Mass Effect with another guy waiting in line who likes Mass Effect as much as everyone else in the line. In the meantime we also talked about Assassins Creeds about approaching a critical mass in too much stuff for newcomers to get into.
After reading a tweet that Paul and Keegan were going to leave soon I made my way out of the line to at least say hi to them. I learned that they had no Code Red Mountain Dew in Canada. I told him them about my first Code Red Mountain Dew story as if May 2001 really mattered to them. Also I speculated that the Mountain Dew Democracy is just surplus Mountain Dew from when US did it in 2010.
While waiting buying a Mountain Dew Code Red I saw Ted Rossi, Jeremy, and another guy for the first time at PAX East.
At 2 PM I went back to the Boot Hill Heroes booth. Got some Broccoli Beef courtesy of Alex. Had our Random Assault meetup of 5 people counting Alex and said our goodbyes. Streetpassed a Russian guy in the handheld lounge again. I said “Give back crimea” on personal greeting.
I was waiting by the Front Towards Gamer Operation Supply Drop back and forth Sunday as a hub. I got to speak to Rana McAnear the face model of Samara and Morinth in Mass Effect 2 and 3.
At 5pm on the show floor, Alex, Curtis, Chris, Willy, and I had our group pics before we said our goodbyes. After saying goodbye, I just chilled near the entrance and I streetpassed for the next hour. I got over 1000 streetpasses.
