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[East] 2012 Best Panel? / Worst Panel?
BIGmog
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The panel I enjoyed the least was probably the hip=hop trading card game panel. I was expecting a demo of the game but most of the panel was a sales pitch.
On the other hand, I think that the Magic panel was pretty awful. Yeah, I came out of it pumped for Avacyn and Return to Ravnica. Everyone gets excited about spoilers - but they didn't provide us with much else. Some serious questions were raised that they weren't prepared to answer (mostly, how Miracle was going to be handled) and they gave non-answers to serious questions that the community cares about, like the lack of diversity in card art. They also scaled down the swag - no free booster pack at the end of the panel.
TL;DR: Disappointing, not much better than reading spoilers online. (Watch here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQXAd0FvNOo)
Design a Dungeon was hilarious and awesome despite devolving to debauchery.
Least Favorite: n/a
I missed Design a Dungeon, heard it was hilarious
My favourite? Mmm, honestly can't decide. There were a number of great ones. The 'Make a Strip', along with the other Q&A's with Mike and Jerry, were great. I loved 'An Uncharted 3 Story: The Chateau, Creation to Ashes', it was great seeing how one of my favourite game series actually create their levels and chapters, and how everything comes together. 'Pitch Your Game Idea' was good (even if the judges seemed like ignorant morons at times. It's a nerdy panel for fun and to share some goofy ideas, not The Apprentice), and the Retrogame Roadshow was also a great panel.
My least favourite? Unfortunately, the third day seemed to be awfully lacking in the Main Theater. The 'How Crisis Management Defines Your Game' seemed really unorganized and all over the place. 'The Indie Rant' was just people reading as fast as possible off a PowerPoint. The others also weren't as interesting as previous days.
Going to PAX East 2013/14 is my biggest goal right now. I plan to achieve it...
I pinged one of the panelists for permission to/remind him to post the recording of it online.
how to start playing d&d was great. i'm gonna be starting my first game soon and just wanted to hear how other people got into it and get some basic tips.
inside gearbox software got me all giggly. got a facehugger, and everyone signed my copy of borderlands. now i'm really looking forward to sept. 18th. i might have joy puked in my mouth a little bit... lol.
I am a monster truck that walks like a man.
I also liked the Paint the Line panel with Steve and Kiko, about the design process and art iteration. I hope to see more panels like that in the future.
LRR. First time attending their panel after attending for the last three years. We could not stop laughing.
Thumbs down: Future of Online Gaming. Way too many panelists. The panel was not informative. More games are going/are free to play, we knew this before stepping into the panel.
Worst: Definitely the D&D 5th edition. If you don't want to give any information away, why have a panel?
After going to it last year I am a little disappointed I did not get to Pitch Your Game Idea and hoping it gets posted online.
Best: An Evening with LRR and Escapist Movie Night. Both were incredibly funny and intimate.
PA Q&A and Draw a Strip were both hilarious, although they were much less intimate.
Worst: Rainslick Precipice panel. This is by no means their fault, I was just sitting in on the panel in order to get good seats for a panel following it. There were some laughs but it seemed to be the audience asking about their specific style of play and wanting only that.
Actually, there were only a few from Main Theatre (Rooster Teeth, Keynote, Gabe/Tycho panels, etc). Most of the content you mentioned (including all day Sunday) came from Naga Theatre. Was the first year doing the twitch.tv thing and I was constantly amazed looking at the viewer count on the stream from the theatre.
Best Panel was "The D&D You Never Knew". It was in the tabletop theater, small. Maybe 60 people filled the room (that's probably the max it could hold). Anyways, Luke Crane told us how awesome D&D was in 1981 when played strictly by the book. It was a fun and loving look back at old school gaming. Very fun & funny. Luke was really excited and passionate about it, which made the panel great. He seems like a guy that would be great to hear talk about anything he is passionate about. My girlfriend told me afterwards she thought she was going to be bored by the panel, but she ended up really liking it, to the point where next PAX we are going to try and do see more of the smaller panels for hidden gems like this one.
Also good was the D&D:Next panel. Mike Mearls is great and his love of D&D really shows through. It was a good panel, even if they don't have a lot of show yet.
One low light for me was the Gearbox panel. The line queued up really early and really fast. They had the line cram in and pack together. They told us they would try and get us in 20-30 minutes early because we all lined up really fast. We ended up not getting let in till 30 minutes after the panel was supposed to start. Free pizza was a fun touch, but it just held up the panel start. The beginning, "questions for free swag" went on a little too long, especially since the panel was starting late. The Aliens trailer and info was cool. The "this is what its like working at Gearbox" slideshow I could have done without and it went on a litte long. Then the Borderlands 2 stuff had to be rushed through since we were out of time. All the stuff they showed for Borderlands 2 was great, but it was rushed and shortened.
I also missed having a Blammimation and Scott & Kris panels.
I'd be interested to hear about this panel. I wanted to make it but didn't for whatever reason. What did you learn?
I found a website with some of his articles on there. My favorite thing about Dr. Klein was that he referred to gaming as playing. He talked about how us as adults still need our own "playtime." Gaming is used to stimulate our imaginations even though the typical stereotype is that gamers are antisocial and introverted. He explained how this is quite the opposite especially with conventions like PAX. Of course, there are people who play hours upon hours upon hours and that can be unhealthy. He gave tips to help friends who may be stuck in a rut and use gaming as an escape. He also works with children and says gaming is good for them as well (as long as they do other things too). This was an awesome comment because I have a 5 year old son who LOVES to play games. He says when he works with families, he doesn't straight up tell a child to stop playing games. In fact, he plays the games with them and gets to know them that way. This helps him determine why a child plays games for hours on end. However, gaming isn't just an escape mechanism. It is really about fun. He also talked about how playing MMOs and other games have helped people who have social anxieties. Bonding with people online is normally easier for most people. Bonding online has helped people come out of their shell. He was an awesome speaker and I highly recommend reading some his articles.
Favorite definitely has to be Pitch a Game because it's always hilarious and everyone has a good time. I think the judging this year was the best yet but if they keep the three judges and bring Kris Straub back, it would be perfect. And the winners this year were really deserving. Spray and Pray (or Pray and Spray) was a great concept and the one where the protagonist gets weaker as the game goes on and resorts to stealthy maneuvering could have easily won as well (although I predicted it would come in second)
Least favorite would probably be Blankety Blank. I love the Match Game but it seemed to be run haphazardly. Way too many people were lined up and although it's chancy to begin with, a lot of the contestants' answers weren't that great. The guy who acted like a creeper probably didn't help that much. It was a fine panel though and Russ Pitts was easily the highlight (reminded me of Richard Dawson, who was the most clever of the bunch) with Susan Arendt (the "host") coming in second
I also want to mention that while I really enjoyed the Transgender panel (really informative), they could have cut the speakers in half. The three on the left (I think it was Charles, Eric, and Morgan) talked for the majority of the panel while the other three chimed in occasionally. The guy on the far right barely spoke at all.
Also, I know it's not me because I was literally falling asleep in the line.
He wasn't so much a creeper as just a bit annoying
On the other hand, I totally enjoyed the Kotaku panel. I actually didn't even read Kotaku until this panel and went just because I was looking to take a break for a little while and really enjoyed myself. It was a little disorganized mostly because I don't think people realized what to expect, but I think if this panel happens again next year people will be better prepared with actual ideas and tools to bring their ideas to creation.
I missed all of the panels I wanted except the PA panels, obviously nothing would stop me from going to those and the draw a strip is my favorite every year. I was tied up with a long island iced tea and a game table in the Westin for all the other "must not miss" panels I had intended to go to.
After the panel was over, we realized that we had bitten off way, way more than we could chew in a 1-hour slot. Our thinking is that—in a perfect world—maybe it would have been better to do one panel about game-related topics (characters, games) and another about transgender developers and being trans in the games industry.
Thanks for the feedback. If anybody else came and saw our panel (Press XY), please let me know what you thought, good or bad—PM me if you don't feel like your opinions would belong here in the thread. The panel was really personal for all of us who were involved in it, and we really wanted to do something that would be interesting but also informative. Any feedback we can get will help us do a better job next time! (But yes, again, we are fully aware that we tried to do too much. *heh*)
My least favorite panel was "Raising the next generation of geeks". As a mother I was interested in going to the panel and acquiring some good information, but in my opinion it didn't quite fit the bill. Some of the information was good, but most of the panel seemed out-of-sync.
All in all the panels I went to see were fantastic and made my weekend!
You could see how surprised and happy they were by the turnout AND the reception. The dude who was willing to just hand them a $100 donation without getting anything in return probably hit home for them just how much fans appreciate a piece of work that sticks to the source material so faithfully while doing it's own thing (something aided, I'm sure, by Chris Avellone's presence).
Getting to meet Zack Finfrock (long time fan of his illustrations/comics) and shock him by reminiscing about his 24 Hour Draw-a-Thon to raise money for his move to California (which, inevitably, lead to the creation of Nuka Break).
The Future of MMO panel was disappointing this year. There were a few plants in the Q&A lines at the mics (Q: "When can see Defiance?" A: "Oh hey, we have the trailer right it! Roll it.") Most of the answers were pat answers. Schilling answered everything with "the gamers decide." Peters (ArenaNet) answered each question with "nothing matters except fun" and the Bioware guy made it surprisingly clear that 'Star Wars WoW' really was the aim of SWTOR.
I walked out of the competitive gaming panel. Half of the panelists weren't there and the whole thing was just talking about SC2. I wish they would have said that it was going to be a SC2 circle jerk because I wouldn't have wasted my time waiting in line and sitting there through something I had zero interest in.
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Attendee: ♥ Prime '12, '13 ..♥ East '12
Sorry about that!
We had no idea the line would fill up that fast. We didn't expect people to start lining up at 1:30 and for it to be totally full a good hour before the panel started. The original plan was to get people in earlier but unfortunately handing out pizza always takes the longest. Our panels never seem to start early enough with the Pizza so we will see what we can do with the enforcers in the future.
Hope the info was good and you got some swag and stuff at the end! Thanks for coming out... We greatly appreciate all our fans!
Gearbox Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/GearboxSoftware
Personal Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/PezRadar
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/escapist-podcast/5569-PAX-East-2012-Panel-Design-a-Dungeon
the gearbox panel made my sunday. my signed copy of borderlands is now one of the gems of my game collection.
now all i need is a wub wub shirt!
Hehe. People saw Mikey wear a Wub Wub shirt at the panel and we have been getting inquiries about it ever since. I know our Community Manager, Chris Faylor, is looking into possibly getting something in the Gearbox Store.
Thanks for coming out by the way. Greatly appreciate it!
Gearbox Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/GearboxSoftware
Personal Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/PezRadar
I was there so I'll offer my two cents. I did notice that the panel ran out of time, but that didn't make much of an impact on me. I think that's because this was my third PAX and I'd probably guess that I've seen more panels go long than not. Honestly, I'm not sure I've ever seen a panel that ended on time - not the good ones anyway. If the subject is interesting then there is just an embarrsssment of riches to discuss.
If there was a future panel with only one topic, my vote would come down on the side of game related focus. Inclusivity is a major topic for me, but I usually come at that from the viewpoint of the consumer/player rather than from a behind the scenes perspective. Anyhow - thanks for a great panel!