I always want to start off every post with So. Today for example I wanted to start with "So we walked the four or five blocks to the convention centre." Always all the time with the So. Maybe I should just do it. Always start with So. It'll be my schtick. But I get annoyed by my So dependence, and I assume my readers would too. Of course, all this self debate about it isn't annoying at all. You know what? Fuck it.
So we walked the four or five blocks to the convention centre, enjoying the nice weather. About half away, we noticed a line. "Odd." thought we. "Must be for people who didn't pre-register." We concluded. As we got closer, we saw that there were two lines. The ends of both snaked away beyond our view. We began to worry. Picking the line that was closest to us, we took our place and began waiting.
Luckily, two nice guys from the Seattle area got in line behind us and really helped pass the time. I've mentioned them before, but they deserve as many shout outs as I can give them: Dwraith, TheFunkyFist, you guys is da bomb, yo!
Also luckily, there were plenty of people to talk about. There were very large people who ran, mayhap for the first time in their lives. I'm loathe to admit it, but the swirling bosoms of a running fat man are quite hypnotic. There were a lot of geeky shirts. Some were good, some made no sense. "Your mom is a face?" What the fuck is that? There was a big, fat red haired man in a costume with a cape. No one knows why. There were skipping goths, which is (I'm pretty sure) against the goth charter.
There was also a big, hot sun. Sometimes, we had to stand in the sunshine. Sunshine is hot. Also, the sun got the fat geeks sweaty even quicker than usual.
So yeah. Lots of waiting. Over an hours worth. I think maybe two. Sometimes, people in "Enforcer" shirts would come around and yell things that only a few people heard. Maybe they were telling us how things were supposed to work, that people who were pre-registered should go to the front of the line. Maybe, I guess I'll never fucking know. Seriously, the only thing out of their mouths that I understood were, "Did you get that?" and "Pass it on." To be fair, no one in our group went to the front of the line to see what was going on. No wait, DWraith went up and asked someone what was going on, she yelled at him.
Oh yeah, near the beginning of the 'line experience' a dude with a video camera came around doing interviews. We all got interviewed. Well.. not so much Carla, she thinks video cameras steal her soul. Not so much steal as cut it out and sell it on the black market, leaving her in a bathtub full of ice. The question was, "What game are you most looking forward to?" We all answered Halo2. If they ever put out a PAX video, look for us. We'll be the most attractive people on it.
We eventually got in. There were a lot of people. The place was swarming. The exhibition hall was already packed. Playable on the floor were Conker: Live and Uncut, Mechassault 2, Forza, Jade Empire, Fable, Matrix Online, Rainbow 6: Black Arrow, and Doom 3. Of those, all I played was Conker. There was almost always a free seat. All the other games had lines at least three geeks deep. Conker was good. Gorgeous. But the multiplayer seemed a bit off. The levels were too big for the amount of people playing. I spent a lot of time wandering around the nice looking environs. Non-playable appearances by: Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, the new Ghost Recon, and a video of Prince of Persia 2. They all looked good. The Frag Dolls were also supposed to be good looking. The Frag Dolls were a team of quasi-attractive females who competed in Rainbow 6 tournies and demo'ed the Ubisoft games on display. Their demoing consisted mainly of crouching, standing up (in the game, it would have been nicer if they had done it in real life) and zooming their scopes in and out. Woot. But I heard they were quite skilled at Rainbow 6. I never did see them in action. I was entered in one of the tournaments, but I was stuck waiting in a line when the time rolled around.
Here's some quick math for you: around 1337(oh, the irony) people pre-registered, around 3700 actually attended. There were around 40 demo units. That's one unit for every hundred people. That ain't cool. There will be more math later.
We checked out everything else in rather short order. The console room was smaller than the exhibition room, and filled with all sorts of consoles. There were a lot of people there who were better than I am in my dreams. Stupid dreams. It too was overcrowded. The PC room was smaller than the console room. I ain't a PC gamer, so we didn't spend much time in that room at all all weekend. The bottom floor, or 'basement' was where the boardtop games were. Fitting.
Carla was kind of disappointed by the lack of stuff to do. Me too. I reckon that'll improve next year. Hope there's more than just Microsoft stuff next year.
With nothing much to do, we got some seats in the auditorium for the Penny Arcade Q and A. More quick math: the auditorium only seated 410. Remember how many people were in attendance? Slightly more than 410. In fact, the panel was delayed a slight bit, as there were too many people in the auditorium, sitting in the aisles and such, and we had to wait as they got cleared out.
The panel was fantastic. Those Gabe and Tycho fuckers is funny. The panel started with them receiving a bunch of applause and hollering (with some hoots thrown in for good measure), then they abruptly threw to a cartoon? "hey, wanna see the cartoon we made?" Riotous Applause. "Okay, here you go." The Cardboard Samurai cartoon was pretty decent. Very flashy. In the sense that it was obviously made using flash. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Not that flash is gay.
After the cartoon, they opened it up for Q&A. Being as I waited to goddamn long to write this shit up, I forget most of all the good nuggets and morsels. A lady in the audience asked why Gabe didn't like Sonic Heroes, his response, "What's wrong with Sonic? Why can't I play as Sonic?" That got applause. Hell, everything they said or did garnered applause. Twisp and Catsby were created with the sole intention of not being liked. That kind of backfired. They sold the publishing rights to PA to some guy who then moved to Alaska. They would really like to sell out, if given the opportunity. Gabe: "you could send all your letters bitching at me about to selling out to Gabe at Sandy Beach. I probably wouldn't read it though." About the process of writing the comic: "We just surf the internet, riffing on everything we see until one of us laughs. Then we're like 'Shit, should I write that down?"
You know, this stuff doesn't read as funny as it was in person. I guess you had to be there (or go to the forum about this very topic). Laughing at Gabe and Tycho as they stalked about the stage, never stopping, always moving. Wondering what was under the black throwcloth. It was a surprise. Not to be revealed until the end of PAX.
After the panel was over, we all got booted out. Carla and I, and I'm sure a fair amount of others, were planning on staying right where we were so we could see the next panel. The Red vs. Blue panel. This was not to be. A line for the RvB panel started forming as soon as the PA Q&A started. There was no chance we were going to get back in. Crappy. If we had known that we couldn't sit for both, we probably would have given this one (the PA one) a miss. Just because RvB only happened on Saturday, the PA Q&A was scheduled for both days. But really,
there was no guarantee that we would have gotten in on Sunday.
The organizers were nice enough to show the panels on all the TVs throughout the convention centre, but you couldn't really hear much of anything. Which kind of sucked. So we went for lunch. We got back just as the RvB thing ended. The dudes were selling DVDs. It was crazy busy. We figured we'd wait until it died down a little and then go grab ourselves a season 2 DVD. We were fools. DVDless fools. I wandered around the convention centre for a bit, starting to come around to Carla's way of thinking. There just wasn't all that much to do. As I was wandering, a Frag Doll asked if I wanted to sign up for a Black Arrow tournament. I told her I wasn't that good. She countered with "Trust me, most of the people we've played against aren't either." Plus she mentioned that there were prizes. Okay then sign me up. For a tournament for a game I've never played before. Whatever.
I went back and found Carla, who was waiting in line for the next panel. How to Break Into the Industry, I think. I waited in line with her, then waited in the auditorium with her. I wasn't going to stay for the panel though, the Black Arrow Tournie was about to start. I was going to get on the escalator to go up to the console room when I saw that the line for the evening concert had already begun, and it was already quite long. Fuck. Leaving all hopes of winning prizes behind, I took my place at the back of the line. Made some small talk with some of the geeks around me and watched the line grow and grow and grow. It was halfway across the basement floor when someone somewhere had the great idea of handing out tickets for the show, so we wouldn't have to wait, in line for the next two hours. That's right, the line for the bands started at least three hours before the bands were to take the stage. I tried to get two tickets, but they weren't having any of that. I told them the other one was for my fiance, the girl handing out the tickets didn't seem to care. I hope she dies childless and alone.
So I ran into the auditorium and appraised Carla of the situation. She ran from the auditorium and managed to get herself a ticket. Thank God. But man, this was turning out to be a gong show. Only slightly more than one out of every ten pre-registered people would get in to see the Mini-bosses (and friends). Not that only pre-registered people were eligible for tickets. I'm just saying that a crapload of people were going to be upset.
Once word got out that only people with tickets were going to get to see the concert, and that all the tickets were already given out, a crapload of people got very upset. The announcements, you see, were not broadcast within the auditorium, and were not very audible in the rest of the building. I'm surprised people didn't come to blows. I mean that both ways, people kicking the shit out of other people to get their tickets or sucking cocks to get tickets. The tickets were in high demand. There were people with signs wandering around, begging for tickets. "Terminally Ill, please give me your tickets" and such. It was interesting to watch the maladies grow more and more severe as the starting time grew nearer.
We watched all this from the line we were standing in. Even though all the tickets had been given out, this was now the line for getting good seats.
Was the show any good?
I think it deserves it's own entry.
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