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PAX Prime 2013 Ideas, Suggestions and Feedback
Like the title says, post your feedback, suggestions, and ideas here.
Keep it civil and constructive, nobody wants to listen to you whinge about how something wasn't fair for YOU.
"we're just doing what smalllady told us to do" -
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Posts
Law and Order ≠ Justice
This is purely for SHOW ideas, suggestions and feedback.
Did you not see the amount of trash that the swag bags created?
First I haven't heard much kudos for it, but the addition of the SMAC classic arcade for the past couple years has been awesome. It's a great place to get hands on with some great games and pinball and to get away from the massive crowds. Please keep it going! I have also gotten more into painting minis and it's great to see the reaper guys every year. Got pretty popular thus year so maybe a room with just an intsy bit more room would be great!
My only concern/suggestion is in regard to the swag bags. Please, please, PLEASE add a spot on the badges which can be hole punched. It wouldn't really slow the line by much and it would be offset by the signifigant amount of people that go through countless times. These people only want lol skin codes, CAH cards an magic deck. Once they pull those out, a discracfully large "waste" pile was produced daily with empty bags and everything excluding the aforementioned. For some reason, people getting 20 swag bags so they can make money on eBay (literaly there were postings the moment bags were available) seems just a wee bit against the spirit pax.
-Turn the queue room into a tabletop area after the queue is gone. Those little side-rooms just aren't sufficient. I found the "gold standard" tabletop room off-site, but even it got packed. The rooms in the WSCC were hot, sweaty, smelly, and uncomfortable. The tables on the 3rd floor leading to the bean bag area were all gone in favour of "life size" games. Bring back the tables.
-Bring back the 2 am stop time each evening. Midnight came too quickly
-Put the Indie games up on the 5th floor where they used to be. That nook on the 4th floor main area just wasn't sufficient. I spent a grand total of about 5 minutes in there because it was just too crowded. On that same note, don't waste so much valuable expo hall space giving prominent booth area to "Jesus Loves Gamers" and retro game vendors - put them in the smaller rooms on 2/3 that got freed up by moving the tabletop crowd to the queue room.
-Bring in the mechs! The Airlock in Kirkland has them. Acquire them for the weekend. Implement them into PAX
-Every other year at WSCC, the Skybridge was vendors that were demoing games and making some sales. This year, the entire West side of the Skybridge was nothing but vendors demoing nothing and selling things that weren't even deals. Move them and bring back the demo labs.
-Kick LoL OUT of the main building. It causes too much havoc, and that 6th floor space is just too valuable. The last couple of years, you couldn't even play the game. Let people into watching someone else play a video game go to Benaroya or something.
-The swag bags have gotten progressively less....swaggy...over the last few years. Reverse the trend.
-Size-cap game booths. By that I mean there's been this trend of making bigger and bigger displays each year. This year, the Elder Scrolls Online and Watch Dogs booths were especially egregious in terms of their size. Surely there is a more efficient use of the space.
-Make a "green screen" for cosplayers to parade through if they so choose
What did work:
-The Mountain Dew scavenger hunt idea was great. The implementation of it needed a lot - and I mean a LOT - of work. There's something valuable that they've discovered here. Legit prizes for code-hunting instead of silly 2x2 Rubik's Cubes or pins. It needs to be fleshed out, though.
-Security staff was much friendlier than in year's past. Whomever sat down and had a talk with them deserves some kudos. They've gone from "openly hostile contempt for nerds" to "kinda-sorta-veiled-contempt", which is an improvement.
-Classic Arcade is a huge win.
-Classic console is great as always.
-Console tourney room was awesome.
-The Olive 8 is fantastic
Was that really a comment saying incredible waste is ok cause it gives janitors jobs? Wow. By that logic murder is ok cause cops have to put bread on the table. Less murder = less hours. Really?
Some of the booths didn't seem to fit the theme well, Comcast/Xfinity? That just made me feel rage-y whenever I saw it. No one in the city of Seattle likes Comcast (insert your own inappropriate name for them). Maybe an exhibitor bailed last minute but still ew. I realize they're an ISP and we need Internet to game, but they're not even in every city in the US, so it seemed really out of place at an expo devoted to gaming of all varieties.
Mixed feelings about the Doritos/Mountain Dew thing. Obviously a separately run gig and had lots of flaws. The auction party was weird, but it provided yet another night time alternative. I'd probably skip it in the future, lesson learned on my part.
Also mixed feelings about the space given to e-Sports. I understand Mike and Jerry's feelings after someone asked in the Q&A but it also feels like they're slowly taking away floor space from what has been the core theme of PAX. I remember a few years ago feeling the same about Halo having the entire annex. I don't have a solution to offer, I know there are folks interested in e-Sports and Microsoft already had Beneroya for the Halo tourney, but I feel like a similar off site location would have better suited the LoL event as well.
I love the Paramount. I rarely (never) have the chance to go there normally so I love the opportunity to attend panels there for PAX. Walking in after the Q&A started... Unheard of in all the prior PAX I've been to since 2008.
I liked that there was another concession stand in the queue room, hadn't seen that in the past. Not sure if that took some crush off of the local eateries but I had less trouble getting lunch/dinner around the neighborhood.
I am also getting old apparently, but midnight was great. Got us on our drive home at a more reasonable time each night and didn't dump us out at closing time in Seattle. I also got 8hrs of sleep each night. Helped recover.
Skipped Monday. Not sure if I could stand a 4th day of crowds but it was nice having late activities Sunday night knowing I could sleep in Monday. Even if we went back to 3 days, I'd love to see a full day Sunday as opposed to closing at 6pm since we do have Monday off.
Why not do away with the swag bags altogether? Let the booths hand out the stuff, free up the 15 Enforcers, repurpose the space. Holy crap, the eye-drops....THE EYE-DROPS!!!!
Haha I was excited about the eye drops until I read "remove contact lenses before using" I bet there were lots of lens wearers at PAX. Foiled!
That being said, there is always feedback to be given...I've spoiler tagged it since it got a bit long.
Couple of positive notes:
Things to work on next year:
Feedback on others feedback:
Enforced: West 2015, West 2016
Olive 8 as the off site tabletop location was amazing. Lots of space and easy to get to without needing an elevator.
Bad:
Closing at 12am (actually 11:30pm) instead of 2am. Didn;t allow us to finish some of the larger games.
Attended: PAX Prime 2010/'11/'12/'13/'14
I was one of the mods on during that panel. There was hardly any begging at that point (as there were no more codes for that day), and it was met with swift bans. Really, the Ryan Davis panel had the most engaged and respectful chatters of the whole weekend.
That said, we are probably going to do away with giving out any codes that aren't directly related to the panel that's showing. We were tracking the view numbers and the codes only brought a small portion of the viewers.
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
Perhaps I was overly sensitive after a couple days of it happening. Glad to hear that it might be changed up for the future.
Law and Order ≠ Justice
One time my badge ended up inside part of my coustume (bathroom duct taping had to happen) and I have never been told so sweetly to "can you take out your badge, dear? I know it's lots of trouble with that coustume of yours" so sweetly by an old woman.
My dad also works in the area and had to travel though the public areas of the WSCC and said they were very considerate in making sure people who weren't con goers could still move through the area.
And I said one nice thing so I can say one bad thing and still sleep at night: the swag bags were a little.... Advertisementy. Maybe it can be made more clear to the sponsors that these are for at least discount codes? At least half of what I got was "buy this computer gamers like it!!" (PS: that iPad game that came in them? It's a fantastic bus time waster. Lots of fun!)
Edit: Sorry I read something about the eye drops people and I needed to comment. At the beginning of the con they were a bit.... Aggressive I guess. Standing in the middle of the path and blocking it. I get they were a sponsor and all but they were getting in the way. They got better by Sunday so I don't know if someone had a chat with them or they got tired.
2.) The fuckwad shouting "FREE CAFFEINE SAMPLES" all day every day had everyone who was hanging out in that area wanting to get the torches and pitchforks. None of that ever again.
3.) Egads the Indie Megabooth. On one hand I loved seeing all those different games and got to play a lot of really cool stuff, but on the other it was just way too crazy crowded. Indie games having a progressively bigger presence is a fantastic thing to see but it might be time to give them a bigger section of the show floor if they're going to keep growing like they have.
4.) Speaking of space, the queue room was kind of a giant waste of it. I'm not entirely sure what else it could be used for (maybe have collapsible tables and chairs on hand in case people wanna eat/play games there?) but there has to be a better use for it than as a giant swag bag dumpster.
5.) The swag bags might be worth trimming out entirely tbh. They create a huge amount of waste and this year didn't even have much in them worth writing home about.
6.) Do we really need to be hosting the LoL tournament? That thing is just a massive waste of space and considering the Tony Montana drug money levels of cash they have I'm sure they can find somewhere else to run it.
7.) Vendor overlap. Do we really need multiple booths all selling the same tabletop games? Catalyst having their room for all their stuff is one thing because they're doing their own, unique thing, but just random local stores showing up to sell basically the same merchandise in direct competition with each other? It's just a redundant waste of space.
Positive stuff!
Yay, the expo hall was drastically toned down from last year! There was far more content and way less bullshit this time around. No competing DJs or booths blasting music just to make noise for the sake of noise. While there were a few exceptions (like that completely random Titanfall statue thing), the booth space seemed much better used for, yanno, actually showing off the products themselves. Some improvements can still get made to ensure that the booths use their allotted floor space wisely, but overall it was a huge improvement this year.
The expo staff seemed a lot more cheerful this year. Maybe Khoo spiked their coffee but it was a nice change this go around.
Yay for Monday! As the Slytherin Death Eater Head of House, my first day of PAX is traditionally spent powering through a massive hangover. Knowing that I have that extra day to play means I can stroll in crazy late on Friday and not feel bad about it. The extra panels and what not are awesome to have too.
The classic console area was awesome to see again. That thing is a big room full of warm, cuddly nostalgia.
In general I had a ton of fun this year and am already plotting for next year! Getting recognized by devs is kinda...weird though.
It gets better and better. Every year there are lots of posts "Get rid of X it doesn't fit the flavour of the show"....this bothers me, as I feel like that attitude is contrary to the flavour of the show. PAX is Home, PAX Is a place where we can geek out and enjoy our various geekery with many other people who share similar interests.
You are not going to like everything at PAX, and not everyone is going to like what you like. Enjoy the parts of PAX you like, and avoid the parts that you don't. Who gets to decide what's the right "flavour"?
I don't like MTG. never will ,nor am I big on e-sports like LoL.... should these be removed because I don't like them, so they can add more of the stuff that I like? This isn't a useful line of reasoning that will help anyone. PAX is about being inclusive, not catering to a specific group's wants or needs.
My group roamed all of PAX, and did not see any one event causing a real un-workable problem for others. That being said, I do think moving large draws for e-sports (like Halo, LoL etc.) to off site locations when available is a good thing, as that draws away from the convention centre and will help with the crowds.
Trust me, having been to a lot of PAXes, at this point Prime is basically a well oiled machine. Sure you will have hiccups here and there, but dealing with that many people is difficult, and PAX does as good a job as can be expected. I've been to many other larger cons, and they are often _way_ worse in terms of crowd management.
PROS:
- 4 Days was perfect, I understand (from speaking to some) that 4 days was very long for the exhibitors, but as an attendee that amount of time was perfect. I didn't notice the early close time, but I am old, and am not going to be at PAX past midnight anyway, so I don't think I'm qualified to comment on that. I think the issue is that volunteers are what keep it open so late, and adding an extra day is really hard on them, so shortening the hours was an effort to make it more management. I spoke to / saw many enforcers who were basically dead on their feet by Monday.
- It really feels like PAX is creeping out over the Seattle down town area with all the offsite locations this year, and I really like that, for no other reason than we're taking over. It would be awesome if we could shut down and take over like 4 blocks! Though I'm sure that's not possible.
- Pinny Arcade! My group thought this was silly and expensive at East and were sure that we would never do something silly like Pinny Arcade...well that lasted maybe 1 day into East, we are now hardcore Pinny Arcade collectors...we all have complete sets for East and Prime and have even picked up some Aus pins (Anyone have a DLC for trade?
- Mountain Dew Every 2 Minutes things...we had a lot of fun tracking down all the QR codes. It was really a lot of fun hunting it around. Having been to so many paxes, we took the approach of not planning on winning anything, and just enjoy the scavenger hunt (as we always assume there will be people more crazy about it than us), but we actually managed to get one of the XB Ones in the auction, so that was a nice bonus, but we would've enjoyed the experience without winning anything as well.
The party they had for the auctions was not our thing, again...old, so loud music and all the mt. dew you can drink is not really our bag, but see comments above about including everyone.
CONS:
- Saw every single scalper from last year, and several new ones as well. They were there all weekend, so it is obviously worth their while, or they wouldn't keep coming back (these things are driven by economics). It will break my heart to leave the WTSCC, but PAX Prime is going to have to move to a larger venue. Tickets sold out in a few hours this year, what will happen in 2014, or the next year or the year after that?
That's really all I have, everything seemed just about perfect this year for my group, maybe we just got lucky, as I know with the amount of people that attend PAX, perfection is not possible, but I really have no complaints.
PAX just keeps getting better and better, if we can find a solution to the limited amount of space we have (might I suggest Tardis technology?), I think we'll be golden!
Basically I think I might avoid the hassle of online ordering next time and just show up with cash in hand. My buddy didn't even use his Sunday pass this year as he twisted his ankle and stayed in the hotel all day.
We loved the promotional CAH card packs in the swag bags, and while it generated a ton of interest and had people trading cards to get a complete set of the PAX promo pack, it also likely caused a lot of hoarding of swag bags and people going through the swag bag line multiple times to get past the Enforcers limiting to "1 bag per person" each time through. Maybe use a hole-punch on the PAX badges to show whether or not someone picked up a swag bag already? Maybe if it were better limited to 1-per-person, the swag bags could have better stuff in them next time besides 3 packs of cards (CAH, MTG, & LoL promo) and a bunch of ads?
- Four days was terrific. I know the intent was to boost attendance options to, at least theoretically, allow more people to go over a longer period of time, and maybe it did that, but the big change I noticed was that people seemed a little less frantic to squeeze in everything they wanted to do over the course of the show. The lines were still crazy and probably always will be, but, at least from my perspective, people didn't seem as jacked up about missing things as they have been in the past... there was another day to come back and fit it in.
- Enforcer and WSCC staff all seemed much more on the same page this year. Kudos to whoever kicked up the communications, it made for a much smoother, friendlier, and more consistent experience this year.
PRO/CON:
- Escalator management. I only noticed this on Monday, I don't know if that's when they started doing it or if it's just the first time one of the security staff pointed it out, but running one of the main escalator sets with two up/one down and the other with two down/one up was a great idea. The only problem was that most people didn't seem to realize it was happening, and so there were still bottlenecks where people tried to go opposite the main flow of that particular escalator bank. Some signage or something pointing to which bank was mostly up and which was mostly down could have been useful.
At no point were the backups particularly bad, it's just a thought.
CONS:
- @pax_lines still seems a little hit or miss. I didn't go to as many panels this year as previously so it didn't bug me as much, but the updates seemed thin and arbitrary. I never knew if I could count on an update for a particular queue filling up or not, or what exactly the criteria were for it to be reported. Some clarity about what that Twitter feed does or does not provide, and for which lines, would be swell. Consider this a follow-on gripe from my 2012 comments on the subject.
- Line caps. I know you have to have them, fire codes and circulation and all. But there needs to be some back-up plan for dealing with overflow lines that doesn't involve yelling at people to keep moving. The Oculus booth was a prime example. Demand way out-stripped the space available, and when the cap was opened every fifteen minutes, it was like a flash mob--everyone hanging around pretending to be interested in a different booth or walking in circles materialized and tried to get a spot.
Realistically, if people want badly to see something, and you can't let them in to see it immediately, there is going to be a line. If you force them to pretend there isn't, and don't let them stand someplace in a quiet and orderly fashion, you get a mad, disorganized rush.
A more innovative approach to dealing with this would have been nice. I see people griping about the queue room being wasted after the show was open; maybe Enforcers could re-use the space for overflow from other queues that unexpectedly outgrow the show-floor space available.
I'm not saying it wouldn't be time-consuming and difficult to shuttle groups around like that. But some solution other than "pretend you're not waiting around for this thing you are waiting around for" would be more fair and less chaotic.
- Echoing some of the other comments here, I think the Indies definitely need more space next year. It's one of the most interesting aspects of the show, and clearly the area pulls in a lot of folks who spend a lot of time looking and chatting there. I guess there's probably resistance to reducing the floor space available to the big guys with the big checkbooks, but it seems clear there's enough draw to the indies that they need more breathing room.
OVERALL
Great experience again. My favorite show ever was still last year's Prime, but it feels like you're settling into a good groove now, and I wouldn't be unhappy at all for PAX to continue on in this vein until time immemorial.
Pros:
- It was so nice on Sunday night when I felt like PAX was over and then realizing there was another day!! I know it is harder on the people running the show so hopefully we can all think of ways to alleviate the stress on them. I hope to see the 4th day as a permanent addition to PAX.
- Amazing selection of panels this year. I had so many marked on my schedule that I couldn't fit them all in.
Cons:
- I feel like Pax Prime's classic console is withering away while Pax East's is getting stronger. East 2013's classic console was much better compared to Prime's this year. Part of the problem is due to the space issue and classic console was stuffed into a smaller venue. The game and system selection was weaker this year also. I love classic console and I'd prefer to see it stay as a part of PAX. But this year it felt like it was an afterthought and got less attention.
- I love League of Legends and the fact that they cooperate with PAX so I want to see it stay at PAX. But the unfortunate reality is that LoL could outgrow PAX. I'm in support of moving LoL to Benaroya. PAX is not an eSports convention so really PAX should only be hosing one and it should be in a large venue like Benaroya. From what I can tell LoL is the most popular and the fact that they chose PAX to host their tournament is healthy for PAX. But, there isn't room for both Halo and LoL so honestly I think one should go, preferably Halo. I bring this up only because events that are more pertinent to PAX like classic console are suffering as a result. CC used to be in the area where LoL was and that space was better for it.