Swag hunters

zwitterion

One of the many fun things about PAX is the Swag. A couple years ago the Pop Cap booth gave away PVZ stocking caps, and my personal favorite was the Borderlands 20 sided dice last year. So I was curious if there is any feedback of certain booths/panels that people like to go to especially for the swag?

Mighty

I don't know of any specific ones, but Nintendo and take two usually have great things. And there's no discounting the CAH boosters that went around

Pavio

I would just recommend not spending a ton of time doing the scavenger hunts to try to win stuff. If you see it while you're doing other stuff, great. But I know a ton of people who wasted a lot of time trying to do that to get swag, and got nothing. Plantronics, for example, had you run around and then come back for a drawing where they gave out one great headset, and nothing else. I kind of wasted my first day on that. Especially with one of the required stops on the scavenger hunt, Alienware, being located in the League of Legends area, so it was closed off during games (seriously, I don't know what they were thinking).

It's kind of changed over the years. I have my swag from previous years and in 2007 and 2012 I got a ton of awesome stuff, and some free games. 2013 saw me sign up for some e-newsletter or whatever. Soundblaster was great in 2012, I got a free awesome noise cancelling headset that I still use, and my brother won another awesome one from Turtle Beach the same year. But other than that, it was "enter your e-mail here" or "run and find this, that, and the other thing."

When it comes to games, less of them are available in freeplay now. For example, in 2007 I tried World in Conflict at their booth, and to check it out further I went to PC Freeplay and it was there. It's still one of my favorite games, and without having it in freeplay I would never have bought it. I also didn't have free copies of games handed to me like I did in 2007. Or shirts that actually fit me (2X).

Still, there have been some great drawings you can enter: Coolermaster, Kingston, and other hardware companies. Seriously, great stuff. Didn't win any of it but saw plenty of it go out And there are just the random giveaways during the day.

Also yes, the 2012 Popcap booth was great.