Is PAX getting too big?

BigRed

mcdermott wrote:

For the rest...well, it's hard for me because after three PAXes (PAXen?) I feel like I know the convention center like the back of my hand

Try working 50+ shows in that building.... I can draw it with my eyes closed, heh.

palmer

mcdermott wrote:

To the bolded, I find that surprising. But I didn't really look at the banner maps enough to verify that they didn't have markers. If not, that needs to get rectified....even if it's just a sticker an enforcer places on it after it's posted up.

Oh, and as for the orientation of map banners, from what I can tell they are all consistently oriented...so while it might seem "upside down" from where the reader is standing, for a lot of people a consistent orientation (such as north-up) is preferable. From my memory, all the posted banner maps follow the same north-up (or at least north-lobby-up) orientation as the ones in the program.

If there were any You Are Here's, I didn't see them.
Ideally, a You Are Here that also shows DIRECTION would make a world of difference.

The maps DID all share the same orientation (which was North up I believe), and typically this is good.
However, part of my disorientation is that in every shopping mall I have been in, mall maps are oriented so FORWARD is up, relative to the viewer. The same is true of those fire maps you see posted next to elevators in a lot of buildings.
For an fixed map in an enclosed space, this is the orientation style I am more used to.

The issue being that mental rotation is difficult, especially when trying to orient in a new area with no landmarks. A non-fixed map has the advantage of being manually rotatable.
Even then, the maps weren't great. Despite looking, I wasn't able to find handheld HQ until Sunday. By accident. It wasn't till Sunday that I was even aware there was a second set of escalators in the building.
Even once I was, I couldn't find my way back easily.

zerzhul

I agree, the maps are pretty awful. Honestly I never even thought about it because I generally knew where I was going... but if one's only way to get around was based on the maps, they fall incredibly short. The part that bothers me the most about them is the lack of including corridor walls and whatnot. It's not so bad if you print out the maps and lay them on top of the convention center maps, but that shouldn't be a necessary step to make them useful.

tsrblke

zerzhul wrote:

I agree, the maps are pretty awful. Honestly I never even thought about it because I generally knew where I was going... but if one's only way to get around was based on the maps, they fall incredibly short. The part that bothers me the most about them is the lack of including corridor walls and whatnot. It's not so bad if you print out the maps and lay them on top of the convention center maps, but that shouldn't be a necessary step to make them useful.

This, 1000 times this. Actually it's kinda funny @cybit showed us around a lot on day 1, by day 2 when we parted for a bit, my wife and I got totally lost trying to find whatever theater we were trying to find (I think it was Serpant). Handheld was like a room of requirment, turning up to surprise us whenever we were tired (but not actually being able to find it when we wanted to.)
Bandland (I think that's what it was called) I saw maybe once, by accident.
The real win was trying to take the back elevators down to Handheld, going through the expo hall, finally remembering that small hallway that dumps you out where the Decido-Tron was, only to exit through the doors and return to the Expohall (we almost collapsed right there out of pure exhaustion.)

I agree BTW, that map orientation as "North is up" makes no sense in a indoor buildign where directionality tends to lose its form. I should not have to pull out my compass to figure out where I am.

matguy

tsrblke wrote:

I agree BTW, that map orientation as "North is up" makes no sense in a indoor buildign where directionality tends to lose its form. I should not have to pull out my compass to figure out where I am.

How about a big 'ol arrow sticker on the floor in front of the map pointing to North.

tvethiopia

matguy wrote:

tsrblke wrote:

I agree BTW, that map orientation as "North is up" makes no sense in a indoor buildign where directionality tends to lose its form. I should not have to pull out my compass to figure out where I am.

How about a big 'ol arrow sticker on the floor in front of the map pointing to North.

or if a "you are here" sticker was added to the map, the sticker could be in the shape of an arrow pointing in the direction you are facing.

Gdex

I think I'm kind of an outlier but I think PAX this year was about the right size. Yes there were lines everywhere but you know what I didn't meet one non cool person in line. First day I meet a couple with their baby dressed up as a pikman and we discussed gaming and raising children with gaming for the whole hour and a half before being let in. Second day I brought my kindle because of lines and was reading American gods and while waiting for ME 3 spent that whole line talking about comics for it with the guy. In the concerts early on someone dropped a twenty to the cookie brigade and told them to feed the line for as much as they could. I come to Pax for the gaming, but the better part is talking with other geeks and nerds.

Space management was iffy some places. Firefall and Nintendo had what i thought were some of the better booths causeless you could get in walk around to see what was there, watch others play and hey if the line for skyward sword was too long they just got an empty space by Mario kart. Things like ME 3 however with that long line and the two rooms to preview the mission, and Boarderlands but I can accept that with it being no pictures still was massive and almost unworldly since it hit the LoL line some times.

mcdermott

tsrblke wrote:

I agree BTW, that map orientation as "North is up" makes no sense in a indoor buildign where directionality tends to lose its form. I should not have to pull out my compass to figure out where I am.

Well, I'm not so much talking about compass direction...it wouldn't necessarily need to be north. But even indoors I'll tend to want to orient myself based on fixed points, which mentally arrange in a fixed orientation. For instance, in a videogame I'd much rather a map feature my character as an arrow with a fixed orientation, than a rotating orientation based on the direction I'm facing.

I'll agree that the maps are merely adequate, though, and I think part of that stems from emphasizing the style (which I like) over utility.

palmer

zerzhul wrote:

Bandland (I think that's what it was called) I saw maybe once, by accident.
The real win was trying to take the back elevators down to Handheld, going through the expo hall, finally remembering that small hallway that dumps you out where the Decido-Tron was, only to exit through the doors and return to the Expohall (we almost collapsed right there out of pure exhaustion.)

I saw the Decide-o-tron less than 10 minutes into Friday.
Never saw it again, even when I went looking

Bandland (was it Bandland? I'm still not sure) was sneaky!
It was in a corner that can be WALLED OFF after hours, and when the walls are pulled out, it looks like that area NEVER EXISTED.
This will SERIOUSLY mess with your orientation, when an entire decent sized section just vanishes.

I only realized it because someone pointed out that the tape for lines emerged directly out of the base of the wall, leading nowhere.

zerzhul

palmer wrote:

Spoiler:

tsrblke wrote:

Bandland (I think that's what it was called) I saw maybe once, by accident.
The real win was trying to take the back elevators down to Handheld, going through the expo hall, finally remembering that small hallway that dumps you out where the Decido-Tron was, only to exit through the doors and return to the Expohall (we almost collapsed right there out of pure exhaustion.)

I saw the Decide-o-tron less than 10 minutes into Friday.
Never saw it again, even when I went looking

Bandland (was it Bandland? I'm still not sure) was sneaky!
It was in a corner that can be WALLED OFF after hours, and when the walls are pulled out, it looks like that area NEVER EXISTED.
This will SERIOUSLY mess with your orientation, when an entire decent sized section just vanishes.

I only realized it because someone pointed out that the tape for lines emerged directly out of the base of the wall, leading nowhere.

you deleted the wrong set of quote tags, I didn't write what you quoted. What it should look like is inside the spoiler.

zepherin

Is there a larger convention center in Washington? Or does PAX already use the largest one? That seams to be the problem more than anything. PAX East has enough room for now, but give it two years and we'll be packed in too. Although both convention centers seam to be considering expansions. I think Bostons has actually been voted in and Seattle is considering it but double the convention space would make Pax Prime a better event. More profitable too.

mcdermott

zepherin wrote:

Is there a larger convention center in Washington? Or does PAX already use the largest one? That seams to be the problem more than anything. PAX East has enough room for now, but give it two years and we'll be packed in too. Although both convention centers seam to be considering expansions. I think Bostons has actually been voted in and Seattle is considering it but double the convention space would make Pax Prime a better event. More profitable too.

It might help, but as the size scales up so would attendees. So unless Bioware decides to build a MONSTERBOOTH, you still run into the same damn issue of "ZOMG nobody can get into the AAA game booths." Also, while you can expand some of the theater/panel space, you're still going to be limited to a certain max size for any given theater...making some of those same overly crowded panels just as overly crowded...only bigger!

zepherin

Yeah but that can be mitigated by having more panels. Also I do believe they are making a larger big room (I can't remember their name for it) so the concerts will also be lessened. But 90k people over 1000 panels and exhibits is going to be more acceptable than 67k people over 400panels and exhibits. The more people that will be there, the more devs and panels are going to want to be there, unless there are simply not enough people to fully saturate the larger hall, but I do not think that is the case.

The thing is certain titles are going to be super popular no matter what. Even if bioware sextupled the amount of people playing TOR the line would still be maxed out. Really if only 1k people showed up chances are 300 of them would queue up for that and 300 others would say damn now I need to find something else to do, and the other 400 were there for something else.

tvethiopia

zepherin wrote:

But 90k people over 1000 panels and exhibits is going to be more acceptable than 67k people over 400panels and exhibits.

it's not that easy to just make more panels. space issue aside, content doesn't just fall out of the sky, and adding more panels just for the sake of adding them doesn't assure anyone will actually go to them. a large majority of people will still want to go to a few top panels. it MIGHT help to have duplicates of those panels, but pax can't just force people to do multiple panels on one topic, and devs won't want to because it looks good for them to have super long lines and crowds, it creates hype.

zepherin

tvethiopia wrote:

zepherin wrote:

But 90k people over 1000 panels and exhibits is going to be more acceptable than 67k people over 400panels and exhibits.

it's not that easy to just make more panels. space issue aside, content doesn't just fall out of the sky, and adding more panels just for the sake of adding them doesn't assure anyone will actually go to them. a large majority of people will still want to go to a few top panels. it MIGHT help to have duplicates of those panels, but pax can't just force people to do multiple panels on one topic, and devs won't want to because it looks good for them to have super long lines and crowds, it creates hype.

True, but PAX Prime is maxed out on the amount of content it can hold. Yes there is a limit to the amount of panels that can be done. I don't think PAX Prime has hit that limit. PAX East maybe has, I don't have a list of people who were turned away for that, but I think more devs will start looking at that as the awesomeness and those will start ratcheting up too. And there are things that people want for PAX Prime that do not require panels. Larger BYOC, Tabletop and handheld areas have been mentioned repeatedly I was using the panels as just an example.

zerzhul

I don't think East has hit any sort of limit yet, it's still in its infancy.

zepherin

zerzhul wrote:

I don't think East has hit any sort of limit yet, it's still in its infancy.

That's what I mean. I think every reputable group that wanted a panel got one.

Shade

zepherin wrote:

zerzhul wrote:

I don't think East has hit any sort of limit yet, it's still in its infancy.

That's what I mean. I think every reputable group that wanted a panel got one.

I saw the footage of East the other day and sweet baby jesus flavored icecream, you could pack so much more in there!

QuizMaster

Regarding the situation of trying to get rid of loitering people who are trying to line up for a panel two panels ahead of time....

How about handing out some sort of panel-specific wristband/ticket ? Then it could be like the concerts of years past: when it comes time to line up, people with these tickets get to go in first (because they were there earlier). Ugh, but then you have to worry about twice as many lines.
But does that seem fair? Instead of waiting around (before they want you to line up), you can have your relative spot reserved for you.


Was this PAX too big? I certainly think so*. Even though all of my friends were in attendance, I only ran into one familiar face during expo hours. When I got home, I learned somebody started a humourous rumour - that people believed - saying that I didn't go to PAX (perish the thought!), based on the fact that nobody saw me there.