This is my 3rd Pax East (2012 & 2013 being the first two) and the only major Con I've ever attended. I've always wanted to go to Gen Con and the like, but I'm not willing to make a vacation out of going to one. I live two hours north in New Hampshire which makes this very much an easy day trip. The first two years I brought my son (who is 19 now) with me. This year I brought my 15 year old daughter & her best friend as well. This is the first Con of it's size she has ever been to. It sold out so quick, we were able to only get Sunday tickets.
Over the three years, I've been amazed at how much bigger it seems each year. I don't think the ticket count has increased, but standing on the skywalk and looking at the sea of people from one side of the hall to the other is impressive. In 2012 it was mainly the one half. In 2013, the tabletop area filled in nicely. This year it was wall-to-wall. As impressive as that is, it also comes with the downside of getting pushed around more, longer lines, and frustration at getting around.
The Swag Bags have really gone downhill. In 2012, my son spent a good 30 minutes looking through the Magic Backpack bag as if it was a hold over from Christmas. XBox Live card, Rift game, dice bag, magic cards, etc... very cool. This year... a plastic bag (not a Magic Backpack) with a magic deck, a single card from Superfight, an advert for Indiebox, and a League of Legends code. I waited 30 minutes in line for this? Walking out of line I was looking for a garbage can... I'm not kidding. I should have gone back to Wargaming.net and got another tee shirt.
Speaking of Wargaming.net... kudos, they even got my anime-loving daughter interested in tank battles. They obviously wanted to make a big splash and I think they succeeded.
Blizzard had a good booth, but there was no love for my current fav.. Diablo 3 to be had. Call me Old School, but they just kicked off Season 2 and have a huge patch coming. None of this is PA's fault of course.
One vendor I looked for, but didn't see this year was Reaper... I was hoping to sit my daughter down for a "paint and take" session. I've bought into all three kickstarters and am very much a Reaper Fanboy. Again, not PA's fault, but I wonder why they didn't come this year.
One highlight... I sat in on my first "acquisitions incorporated" session. This is something I've wanted to see live for years. I've been very impressed with the costumes and dwarven-forge-esk dungeons. But wait... no costumes... they didn't even dress up? A bare wooden table with the dungeon printed on 8.5x11 office paper. Mr. Perkins... is this the introduction to D&D you planned to give to hundreds of gamers? I'm sorry if this sounds harsh, but I've spent alot of time creating World Works Games dungeons and hand painting Reaper Bones figures for a single day dungeon crawl for four friends. Ask for help next time... I'm sure Dwarven Forge will fall on their sword to setup a presentation like that. Geek Chic too. I'll have to watch what I missed after I walked out.
Cosplay really peaked in 2013 for me... what a difference between 2012 & 2013. I saw costumes that looked hollywood quality. This year was not a good year. Maybe it's better on Saturdays. I know this isn't something PA controls, but I've bragged about this to my cosplay-loving daughter. At least she hasn't been to another Con, so she doesn't know how good it can be. I probably don't either. Big Daddy... where have you and Little Sister gone.
Overall, as Pax East gets older, it feels like it's getting lazier. I got the feeling this year like everything was organized very well like all the previous years, but there was that extra bit of attention that was lacking. Execution seemed flawless. Traffic, as crazy as it was, was as good as any TD Garden concert. All the Enforcers where very helpful directing lines and answering questions. Vendors drew huge crowds who waited an hour or more to play a demo. Most telling for me is that I don't feel like calling up my friends back home in Michigan and bragging about what they missed. I'm sure I'll go in the future because my children will want to. I'm not sure that I will be as excited for myself though.
Not announcing an apparent "No masks" rule for cosplayers. Friday morning I was stopped by an enforcer as I was coming in from the queue and told to remove the mask I was wearing for my cosplay. I asked why and they couldn't give me more reason than just "it's a new rule". Nowhere did I see this posted and I wasn't stopped in the lobby when I did a weapon check or came down the the queue room so it seemed fairly odd. I talked to about a dozen other masked cosplayers and they all said they had similar experiences. To my knowledge there was nothing posted about this anywhere online before the show.
I'd like to apologize for this. There is no restriction on masks for attendees. After reading your post I contacted PA management, our Expo Enforcer Managers and also BCEC staff to see where this rule came from (as I was unaware of it and I'm the guy who tells cosplayers what they can and can not have).
There is no restriction from PAX or from the BCEC regarding masks worn by attendees.
There is a rule about Enforcers not wearing masks when they are working and I am guessing that this was misunderstood by the Enforcer in question and somehow that information was passed along word of mouth. I will be making a follow up post on our internal forum and guide and we will address it next year to ensure that no one thinks there is an Attendee mask restriction.
It's PAX, even the worst PAX is still pretty good!
I learned how to play some card games.
The Dunkin Donuts right outside of the side entrance was great. Me and my friends used this EVERY morning. Great to get a coffee on a cold day to give you the energy boost to continue PAX'ing.
Only attended the ASUS after party, but it was amazing. I got in VIP because of my friend, but I am sure that even if I wasn't VIP, it still would have been great!
CONS:
Lack of AAA titles and companies. I was able to pretty much go through the Expo floor for like 3 hours (if that) and feel like I seen everything I wanted to see. Disclaimer, I am not a big fan of indie gaming, but even then.. I feel like not much could be said about the indies either.
The panels were really bad this year (I understand that isn't PAX's fault). This coupled with my first listed CON made me feel like I was pretty much done with PAX around 4 PM every day. I just forced myself to perk up so I wouldn't be the stick in the mud to my friends.
The community is a bit anti-social. I know gamers are known for being outcasts and the like.. but there was one night me and my friend said "Lets just walk around and see if we can meet and make new friends by saying hi to people". We literally did just that (no we weren't condescending or creepily nice. Just normal). We were met with the overall feeling that they wish we would go away (though that isn't what they said, I could feel it).
Overall, despite this PAX feeling significantly worse than last year.. I am still planning on going next year. Like I said.. even the Worst PAX is still pretty good! I am hoping to be able to create a big group of friends (like an online community) that can hang out together during PAX.
I thought this was a very well-run PAX this year (my third as a panelist). A lot of things have already been said, here's my "hear, hear" and a few more thoughts:
Raffles shouldn't happen on the expo floor. Ever. Do it in the queue room, or even better do it through text messages or sign-ups or whatever. A few booths did that; I remember one SSD manufacturer that ran their raffle that way. You didn't notice those that did, which is what made them so great.
Expo floor (in general) was the best it's been in years. Lack of Riot was GREAT. May their annoying, loud, floor-clogging booth never ever return. Sadly Twitch was trying their darndest to fill the gap, but at least it was by the "up" escalator instead of the "down" one, so it wasn't so bad.
MTG took up way too much space, robbing space from the tabletop freeplay, which remained packed while MTG tables sat empty. I repeat my 2014 suggestion that after the queue room is used for the morning, tear down some of those queue lines and put up some tables and chairs for the board gamers. Signings can happen in the overflow rooms if need be. Or just use some of the many, many rooms in the BCEC as an expo hall queue room the whole weekend. Or snake a line through the hallway around the Expo hall. As it is, it's prime real estate that sits empty for 90% of the con.
NO TABLES BY THE FOOD AREAS. Seriously, what was up with that? Where were people supposed to eat, or just hang out? In years past there were tables all over the place, lots of places to sit down, eat some food, chat with friends, play a quick card game, assemble your gear for your upcoming panel, etc.
Weird that the "indie tabletop" area was in the middle of the video games section. Totally missed that it was there for most of the con, just put it with the tabletop area.
Line enforcement for the main hall was a LOT better this year. Not only were enforcers in general much less awful about squeezing people together every ten minutes, they also sent them in properly rather than just opening up every door at once and creating a bumrush in.
Please do share the Bioware Base schedule if you can. Even if it's just to post the schedule down by the entrance. There's cool stuff happening, and it can pull people off the floor, but only if we know about it. Win-win!
Someone else mentioned that listing the games as well as the companies on the indie megabooth would be really nice. I'm not sure how feasable that is, but it would definitely help people find each other, and the games they are interested in. I don't remember which twee indie game company title is making that cool thing I want to check out; I do remember the name of the thing, though, and/or an interesting name will help pull me in.
Hard out at midnight isn't great. Wish the expo hall went at least another hour, too. 6:00 is so early, especially with a late start like 10:00. Give us more! There was so much I wanted to see but I just couldn't.
the parking communication was TERRIBLE. One person on my panel who was driving in arrived an hour and a half early and spent that entire time being routed around and back by people who didn't know what was going on. He very nearly missed the panel. It's clear his experience wasn't unique, though the stakes were definitely extra-high there. Whatever is happening re: parking communication needs to be improved next year.
at one point when I needed help trying to find a lost object I was routed to an enforcer who had lost her voice and was whispering into a portable megaphone to talk to me. On the noisy hall floor it was basically impossible to understand anything she was saying, though bless her heart, did she ever try. There were other enforcers just hanging around but they didn't jump in -- if you see your fellow suffering, help out! And maybe don't put someone who has lost their voice in a situation where she has to do a lot of talking in the first place. She was trying so hard to help me, I can't blame her, but it was hard for both of us when it didn't have to be.
Thought the panels this year were a nice mix. Thanks for accepting mine! I'm already excited to submit one for next year.
Someone upthread asked why the panels don't load in until shortly before the posted start time, and I can tell you that we were dealing with technical things up until almost the very last minute -- they didn't have the right HDMI cable for my laptop, so they had to grab one, but it was the wrong type, so they grabbed another laptop and transfered the file, but then it didn't have the right fonts for the presentation (so we had to install them from my computer), and then it wasn't transmitting to the screen.... we fixed it just as we opened the doors, five minutes before start time. It's a lot of tech to figure out in under 30 minutes if literally anything goes even slightly wrong. Props to the amazing enforcers who helped out though, and who gave me an extra two minutes to answer the last questions at my panel.
Oh! One last thing! My panel table was set up with a giant lectern in the middle, which would have gotten in the way of the panelists being able to see one another, and even some audience members. Thankfully the aforementioned awesome techie enforcers were able to remove it pretty easily after I asked. One of them remarked that nobody used that center lectern anyway. So maybe next year just set up the panels as long tables, since that's what most panelists expect and want to use? You can slide the lectern into place, either in the middle of the two tables or at one side of them, for those that request it. Just a little thing.
ilta on
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TopherRocksRockstar Beard GrowerKent, OH or Long Island, NYRegistered Userregular
I'd like to apologize for this. There is no restriction on masks for attendees. After reading your post I contacted PA management, our Expo Enforcer Managers and also BCEC staff to see where this rule came from (as I was unaware of it and I'm the guy who tells cosplayers what they can and can not have).
There is no restriction from PAX or from the BCEC regarding masks worn by attendees.
There is a rule about Enforcers not wearing masks when they are working and I am guessing that this was misunderstood by the Enforcer in question and somehow that information was passed along word of mouth. I will be making a follow up post on our internal forum and guide and we will address it next year to ensure that no one thinks there is an Attendee mask restriction.
Thank you, I really appreciate you looking into this and getting an official answer about it.
I have no idea how some of the cons posted can be fixed when the sheer number of people that were there was so large, but I'm sure someone is trying to figure it out! On Saturday, it felt like it was close to Comic Con size, which is truly scary. the last publicly listed attendance was 85,000 a few years ago, and this year felt nearly twice as crowded, so I'd say it's safe to assume it's over the 100k mark now.
I'm duplicating a lot of the comments already posted, I'm sure.
Pros:
The larger size of the Expo Hall made it much easier to walk around except for a couple of choke points where lines were too close together in the aisles.
Capping the lines and having Enforcers kicking extra people out of the area helped with traffic flow a lot in the larger lines.
The panel I did see (CAH) had a huge line that was out of the way and left enough traffic flow around them if people needed to pass by. Great management there!
The food trucks by the side near tabletop was great! More, please! The price difference was minimal for what felt like twice the amount of food (like the meatball hero). I don't suppose the convention food court was too thrilled by that, though.
The extra beanbags by Yogibo (I think) helped by the handheld area, for comfortable crash space.
Having the inside food trucks spread around the outside helped to make them more accessible and gave more walking space around the outside.
The layout of Tabletop where most of the booths faced inwards towards the demo/free play area was great!
Cons:
The lack of AAA games did put a dent into things a little, but I'd like to see the ones there spread out more to help spread out the lines. The overload of people between Blizzard, Dreadnaught, Orcz Must Die, Smite, and Twitch choked that whole half of the area to the point that I nearly forgot that Gung Ho was there despite the size of their booth!
With presumably over 100k of people there, the popular lines capped within a minute of the queue opening. That's just insane!
Another vote for banning the in-booth raffles. Force the booths to use the queue room or email/twitter/[post on their board to announce winners at specific times instead. The masses by MSI and NewEgg were ugly. I get they want people to come back to their booths, but let's be honest, when hte masses hit the raffle time, nobody is looking at or buying anything there at that time. Nobody could do that even if they wanted to. Winners could be told to come by and if they do not claim their prizes by the end of the day, alternates will be picked to pick up in the morning. For Sunday, I guess you could have them give the last things away to people actually in the area, or in the queue hall or someplace specific.
The CAH line had been capped before the PAX_LInes tweet went out, and I was surprised since the usual Pax rule is "Don't line up until the last panel lets in". If we hadn't gotten there just before that panel let in, we would not have made it since we were one of the last 30-ish people inside! A little consistency there would help.
Advance notice of the layout of the Tabletop area and the indie booths would still be nice, especially within the Guidebook App. Heck, even at the show, there were so many vendors that I forgot where certain booths were located!
Better notification about the food trucks and the closing of the side doors would have helped a lot! I hate that people leaving right at 6 to get a smoke had to walk all the way around back to the front!
The lack of tables, chairs or any kind of crash space compared to previous years was surprising. Not just for food, but the space where the coat check was last year by the outside of tabletop could have been used for tables and chairs for people to eat and rest at. This meant handheld and the new beanbag areas were mobbed and people camped out areas for their groups, leaving no space for people to take quick breaks from walking.
I know there is no space now in the halls, but Tabletop is absolutely packed from about 11am on every day now, and needs more space!
Pax can't help here, but the PrePax night at the Westin was so packed, there were no tables open when I dropped by after 7 from dinner. It's great but scary to see how popular things have become!
Overall, though, I still think Pax is one of the best cons I can be at. With so many people there, you can only do so much, and despite the huge crowds and the mainstream public getting into Pax, it's safer and more inviting than other gathering that are this big. That's an amazing achievement!
You know, i would like to see a table/booth for child's play somewhere. We organize so many charity gatherings for them, cookie brigade, pokecrawl, ect, that people ask a lot what this charity is. We tell them but i think a booth with pictures of how the funds are helping children would help get more donations.
Someone upthread asked why the panels don't load in until shortly before the posted start time, and I can tell you that we were dealing with technical things up until almost the very last minute -- they didn't have the right HDMI cable for my laptop, so they had to grab one, but it was the wrong type, so they grabbed another laptop and transfered the file, but then it didn't have the right fonts for the presentation
While this might be true, I've been in plenty of panels where things were still not ready as it began. One of the better panels I went to the presenter forgot his projector cable for his mac. He said "This is a tech show, doesn't anyone have this cable" sure enough they did, and off to a good start. While it may not always be welcome, I guarentee you that there's enough help in the audience to fix any problem that might come up.
Enforcers vary between helpful and terrible. The panel line enforcers are especially terrible, often giving conflicting information. We could be told were ok where we are by one and then told we have to move by another. Only to see a larger group of people move in later, or even a group of enforcers in one case.
The lines that fill up before the line even begins is still a problem. Cards against humanity was full a full hour and 30 minutes before it started. Is there no a solution involving wrist bands or some sort of sign up system? A line for a good seat, ok, but theres no reason to hold hundreds of people in place if they want to walk in 5 minutes after with a wristband if they have something better to do. Have the line if people want seats, otherwise hand a wristband and let them go do other things. 10 minutes into the panel, let the overflow in? Lines right now are "oh dear god I hope we can get a seat->show up before the line starts" and not "we are willing to wait if it means good seats"
Demos by appointment would be nice, maybe with smartphone app so you can cancel? I get the issues here too on why its not feasible.
There needs to be incentive or psychology put in place to let vendors know that setting up a 4 hour line or crowd around your booth or inciting a riot doesn't build hype and get people interested, it just pisses every one off (good riddance riot). Right now I feel like it's in Vendors best interest to cause these issues.
I personally didnt notice raffles or issues with them? But they are a bane none the less. It's more incentivizing bad behavior.
A sign at the top of every escalator saying " <----albatros/bumblebee | C/D ---->" would make traversal on the upper levels so much easier.
Swag bags were non existent? Every day we saw noone with bags, and we could never get one ourselves. I heard they were barren this year, which is ok if so I suppose. Logistical/manpower issues aside, I would recommend putting in a card with 3-6 random mini-buttons on it, to foster trading with other users? Everyone seemed to have mini buttons this year. If swag bags plain go away I would be alright with it, if people want their MTG mini deck, they should be able to just walk over to a pile at WotC and pick them up.
"Hidden" booths. Behind a bunch of stores, I found booths showcasing moderate(not indie, not AAA) games and they were mostly empty. There should probably just be a "store" area for the floor like there is for board games.
Stuff that worked:
On the flip side of lines, we had to go get wristbands for the warframe event(it was super limited to be fair) 3 hours before the event, which wanted you to sign up online ahead of time(that I never got working), then we had to stand in line for an hour in the queue area. The hour is on us, we wanted good seats and it was worth it! Otherwise we could have shown up a lot later.
Everyone having minibuttons if they weren't 'legit' enough to get pinny arcade stuff was nice, in that it felt more standardized all around this year. I got some from people who made content I like and proudly wear them.
We really liked the food trucks, please keep them/get more. Food vendors were serving cold "hot" dogs
Show floor was so de-congested this year, we thought maybe people had problems getting in due to weather. I think it was just better layouts.
Q&A with prepicked questions (to keep the sob stories from before out) works amazingly well. Please keep this.
I understand the production nightmare that is setting up a panel with only 10-45 minutes prep time, but some panels had some really bad sound issues/balancing? The camera work/direction was pretty amazing on the big panels.
Disney Fast Pass....excellent model. Shouldn't be all that difficult to duplicate
I always hear "what about people without a smart phone" I suppose there are those people, but there's no reason they cant be this AND a line
A sign at the top of every escalator saying " <----albatros/bumblebee | C/D ---->" would make traversal on the upper levels so much easier.
I love this idea! It would have been so helpful.
For the pannels that fill up really fast, have they concidered streaming it to another room where more people can watch if they want? My friends and I tried to stream a pannel via twitch on our phones, that we had missed the cap for, but where met with shotty internet. It would have been great if we could have went somewhere to watch it.
In the past they have streamed main theater stuff in cuttlefish if there wasn't a panel going on there. buying 6 more gopros for Twitch would help but apparently they dont make enough money to justify that
Any chance of getting the PAXMANIA/Wrestling Shenanigans into the Main Theater on Sunday morning? They never have enough room it seems to fully let loose and the line always fills up. It is always one of the highlights of PAX because of the awesome production value behind it.
The line for the PAXamania panel didn't fill this year, not even close; the 1000+ seat theatre wasn't quite half full -- I'm curious, what made you think that it was?
Oh! One last thing! My panel table was set up with a giant lectern in the middle, which would have gotten in the way of the panelists being able to see one another, and even some audience members. Thankfully the aforementioned awesome techie enforcers were able to remove it pretty easily after I asked. One of them remarked that nobody used that center lectern anyway. So maybe next year just set up the panels as long tables, since that's what most panelists expect and want to use? You can slide the lectern into place, either in the middle of the two tables or at one side of them, for those that request it. Just a little thing.
We've had a number of panels where the lectern gets used my a moderator of some kind, but if you (or any other panelist) asks, the theatre enforcers should be happy to move the lectern, push tables together, or whatever - the more notice you can give, the better; and if something isn't possible, we should be able to come up with a solution that'll work.
Since a lot of stuff has already been posted, I going to state few major cons just from playing Rock Band alone.
- The Rock Band playing line ran like crud when people can't find four people and decide to run two people on stage for a six minute song or seeing two guys in New York baseball jerseys play three songs consecutively in each group of friends bands. (one Yankee and one Mets, btw you two both suck, not for the fact that you both cheer for the two teams of New York but you suck cause you buy fake, replica crap jerseys and not authentic. Get shrek'd, you plebs.)
- There should be a catalog printed out for people to know what song to play ahead of time instead of taking five minutes of everyone's time that already hasn't been wasted. Like have an enforcer/coordinator who uses the player controller and chooses the groups song. Also there was a umber of songs that me and my friends thought were available but weren't there, so we had to go to an immediate back up song cause dammit no catalog.
- No one should waste an hour in line with for a 4 minute song with what you presume are 6 groups in front of you. I get that people want the freedom of choice for songs, but when you don't play the game at all and choose to play "Through Fire and Flames" on medium and miss more than half the notes on all instruments including vocals, it's trolling to all the people actually know how to play the game and want to play the game. Set up a time limit for each song like 5-6 mins max unless you are serious business (expert all across for instruments).
- Finally, since there was no caretaker or enforcement on the playing peripherals, we always have damaged equipment, mostly being bass pedals being broken. Just ain't fun when your playing with instruments that prevent you from gold starring songs.
I just want to state these issues for me were very big issues that repeated itself a lot during the weekend.
This is my 6th PAX East, I been to E3 a few times now to never compare the these two events but I love PAX overall just due to the locale and friends that get to join me in debauchery. Looking forward to the next.
Pros:
-The Enforcer who I made laugh because I couldn't keep myself inside the lines was awesome (pretty much an inside joke between me and her).
- Indies INDIES INDIES! Man, they really were awesome this year. So many I hope I don't forget any of them.
- Watching Skeletor play drums on the Rock Band stage
- Nintendo employee whose Link amiibo fought my Bowser amiibo.
- PAXAMANIA
- Friends, it is always awesome bumping into friends whether it is in the elevator, lobby, show floor
- Free to play area
Cons:
- The Enforcer who gave me a hard time. While in line for PAXAMANIA, My friend cut the line to hand me my money and then left the line. I told the enforcer what was happening and apologized but he just gave me the death stare. When we got into the theater, I walked up to him and apologized again only to be stared at without him saying anything. Every year there is at least one enforcer who gives the rest a bad rap.
- I missed the Riot booth. I understand alot of people are glad it is gone but I love League of Legends. I still feel there is a good way to setup the booth and not be a hazard. Without Riot being there, Other booths stepped up as the fire hazard booth.
- Swag bags. I agree with others that the quality has gone down. Some people still claim they did not get one. I say get rid of the swag bags all together at this point.
- The stuff I wanted to do almost always overlapped with something else I wanted to do. Nobodies fault, just sucks.
Not a pro or con but I went to more parties this year. I feel like it made "My" PAX feel shorter. Some were awesome, some were not but I think next year I am going to stay at the convention longer.
2) the time limit should only be enforced if there are no unused hardware available. A couple years ago my friends and I got booted from an xbox 360 after like 3 matches of Blazblue. An enforcer told us we needed to give up the console. I look around the room, and there were at least 8 unused 360's in the room. What's the point?
Console availability isn't the only factor we figure in when asking people to check back in. Our software tracks # of copies of any given game available, and if current availability drops to zero (eg in this case, we have no more copies of blazblue available), we ask those attendees to return if their checkout time has expired. This way, we try to ~guarantee that if a title is in our library, at least one copy is available to check out at all times. Otherwise we let people play past their checkout time.
Oh! One last thing! My panel table was set up with a giant lectern in the middle, which would have gotten in the way of the panelists being able to see one another, and even some audience members. Thankfully the aforementioned awesome techie enforcers were able to remove it pretty easily after I asked. One of them remarked that nobody used that center lectern anyway. So maybe next year just set up the panels as long tables, since that's what most panelists expect and want to use? You can slide the lectern into place, either in the middle of the two tables or at one side of them, for those that request it. Just a little thing.
We've had a number of panels where the lectern gets used my a moderator of some kind, but if you (or any other panelist) asks, the theatre enforcers should be happy to move the lectern, push tables together, or whatever - the more notice you can give, the better; and if something isn't possible, we should be able to come up with a solution that'll work.
Oh yes, totally. I want to be clear, the panel enforcers were totally helpful here, both in moving the lectern and in getting the tech figured out. It just seemed to me that a lectern placed to the SIDE of the tables, rather than in the middle, would be the best "default" solution since it's easy to use or ignore, rather than putting it in the center where it's in the way. But I only have my own perspective -- I was doing a theater panel where it was important for everyone at the table to be able to see one another.
As for polling the audience for a cable solution -- yeah, I totally would have done that if I had to, but I'm glad I didn't have to, ultimately. I'd rather have the audience walk into my panel to be greeted by everything working smoothly and nicely than pull a "is there a doctor in the house", you know? Good to know for future events, though.
I live in a suburb of Boston so I've been to every PAX East so far and I have to say that 2015 was the most underwhelming one yet. Don't get me wrong, it still was an amazing time for my friends and I, but it felt a little sparse this year, like some things were missing. I'll go into that in my pros and cons.
Pros:
-Expo hall layout seemed to be the best yet. Food areas in the corners of the hall instead of all together at one end as in previous years was a huge improvement, as was the layout of the busier booths. This may have had to do with the fact that many AAA developers and vendors were missing though (see cons).
-PC and console tourneys were great as always
-Enforcers were helpful and polite while being efficient
-Blizzard's Overwatch booth was awesome, from the layout of it (you could watch the gameplay from just about anywhere), to the length of the demo, and the number of available stations to play it (4 groups of 6v6 players)
Cons:
-Timing was awful this year. The first weekend in March is a terrible time to hold PAX East for many reasons. March is still very much winter in New England and the chances of there being a snowstorm the first week of the month is high. PAX was lucky this year given the heavy winter we've had. Also, many people (including myself) are pretty much in the middle of their school semesters. I found it difficult to work around PAX this year work-wise since I also work a full time job while going to school. Throw in GDC and the daylight savings time change, and it was an awful choice of a weekend. It felt like there were less cosplayers this year too due to the freezing cold outside. Let's not even get into the parking issues due to snow banks taking up all on-street parking spaces in the Seaport District.
-Lack of AAA developers and popular hardware vendors. I've always been excited to see 2K, Riot, Rockstar, etc. at PAX East. This year they were nowhere to be found. Not to mention the hardware vendors. I missed having ASUS, Corsair, and Nvidia there. Perhaps this had to do with the timing of the convention this year, since many developers are still coming off of the holidays and are likely not ready to show off their upcoming fall/winter titles so early? GDC may have also played a role here. It's hard to swallow the increasing costs of badges when the bigger names are pulling out.
-Lack of contests for swag. This year, it seemed that barely any booths were doing contests for prizes or swag, instead opting for more raffles. I remember doing a CS:GO contest for t-shirts at the Corsair booth last year, Typing of the Dead contest at Cooler Master, another typing speed competition at Newegg, staring contests at the eye drop booth, and a CS:GO tutorial speedrun contest at Plantronics in 2013. This year, contests like these were nowhere to be found and a lot more emphasis was put on raffles (which are always annoying and frustrating). Even Infinite Crisis gave out raffle tickets for doing their carnival games.
-The indie area was incredibly crowded this year probably due to there not being as many big names in the expo hall.
-Just an overall lack of things to do. My friends and I usually buy three day passes and spend all three days from morning to late at night doing various things, but this year, it felt like we were running out of things to see and check out. After we finished with the expo hall, we checked out some of the stuff upstairs like the free play areas, but even so, we were leaving earlier every night.
-Lack of interesting panels. This is something that has been getting worse year after year for PAX East. Gone are the developer panels like the one a couple of years ago where Hitman Absolution was showcased, or Bioshock Infinite. Instead, most panels are now just some random panelists that talk about video game related topics while trying really hard to be funny. We went to one panel this year and we ended up walking out after about 15 minutes because it was just boring and not funny.
Again, I sound like I'm hating on PAX East 2015 pretty hard but it was still a really fun time and I will be going next year with my friends. We might rethink going with the three day badge though if the trend of less developers and vendors continues.
Again, I sound like I'm hating on PAX East 2015 pretty hard but it was still a really fun time and I will be going next year with my friends. We might rethink going with the three day badge though if the trend of less developers and vendors continues.
I actually don't think you sound like you are hating on PAX East 2015 at all, since almost all of the things you said, I find myself nodding along. I know I will definitely cosplay next year though. That seems like the way to go. Because even if the overall convention comes off as "meh", cosplaying will still make it a good time for me
4th PAX East here, overall I was pretty happy, but there are some things that could be improved of course...
Pros
Queue Line, I thought it was handled great this year and hope to see it stay as organized as it was. I always hated it when they let lanes go out of order, or just let people walking in join the mob of a lane going, while the rest of us watched them get on the floor before those of us waiting an hour or more.
Minor gripe - the beach balls/animals being tossed around - I don't know who supplies these but they're sort of a good/evil thing. While it's fun tossing the ball around to others, some people are idiots and slam the ball into an unsuspecting persons face, elbow them in the face/chest, or worse - hit them with the ball while they're trying to drink something. I think looking into some other form of entertainment in the queue line would be a good idea...
Merch Booth, at least the expo floor one. I liked how they had all the items out already and you just had to get in line and pay. Made everything go pretty quickly IMO.
Food Court/Trucks. Having food spread out all over the place was really nice, it was nearly impossible to be going somewhere without seeing a place to get food. The food trucks were awesome, and I hope there is an even bigger presence of them next year. Minor thing though, change the signs for them. The "Wizard. Eat Food. This Way." or whatever sign were.... confusing/not helpful? It didn't make sense to me at all until I looked closely outside and saw the food trucks.
Panel lines. Yeah they were long, and some did get capped easy, but I thought enforcers handled them pretty well. The designated queue lines and overflow areas kept everyone in one spot and let traffic pass through easily. It was also nice that (for some panels at least) they tried to use the counters as accuractely as possible, and tell us we had XX% chance of getting in.
Cons
No AAA titles! While I don't think its PAX's fault, it did kind of suck not having anything really "big/new" there besides Overwatch.
Seating/Tables/etc. There were so many places to get food, but so very few places to sit. Someone mentioned before, but there was an extremely large, unused space near the food truck entrance (the old coat check space), where they could have put tons of chairs/tables.
Unused space in general. The TT/BYOC area was the biggest offender here IMO. Like others said, there were few freeplay tables, and lots of unused MTG tables... does not compute. Also, there were VERY big wide open spaces near the BYOC/Freeplay area. They could have put more tables there, moved vendors there, did SOMETHING with that area. There was also a decently sized open area near the ESL arena, again, put chairs/tables there or something.
Twitch/Polaris. I'm not saying get rid of them, but always having them near the stairs/escalator is dumb. The Merch Booth/Square Enix side had noticeably better traffic compared to the Twitch/Polaris side, it IS possible to have a good flow of traffic near the escalators/stairs, make it happen!
Raffles on expo floor. I think everything that needs to be said about this has been said, lol.
Suggestions
I think it would be nice to have all the "vendor only" boothes in one area. I think the diversity lounge could have been moved elsewhere, and vendors taken that room instead.
A streaming area for panels that have been filled. I think you could take the ESL area and expand it into a streaming site for those that weren't able to get in a popular panel. As I previously said, there was a lot of unused space there, so more chairs could easily be added, and people could just stand in the queue line lanes as well. I doubt it'd be hard to set up an additional screen and projector/sound system.
I agree with what many have said in regards to raffles. Have them being text/email/etc alert, and just the one/few people need to claim their prize at a designated time. Or, if they REALLY need to do the crowd thing, do it in the queue line area.
- Harmonix party. Listing this first because holy shit was it awesome. Thanks for doing what you guys do, keep it up.
- Tabletop free play is great. LFG cone worked perfectly and I enjoyed meeting some new people and playing some games.
- Indie games area. Very cool games with short or no lines.
- People. Everyone I interacted with was cool.
Cons:
- Table top free play area is WAY too small. Looked for a table to play on for a solid 20 minutes before going upstairs and playing in one of the dining areas. Increase tabletop area! Dumb stuff like halo tournaments seemed to be lackluster and taking up a ton of real estate that could be better used. Likewise for magic the gathering dedicated tables as has been mentioned earlier. We don't need that much space dedicated to magic cards.
- Swag bags. Horrible this year, just eliminate them if they're going to be this bad.
- Raffles on the show floor. Already mentioned dozens of times. Kill these please.
- Panels. Most of them seemed really boring this year. I did attend make a strip, D&D live, and giant bomb panel and those were pretty good as usual.
- Timing of con. I expect this will improve because nothing can be as bad as this year was. Winter in the north east is a horrible time to have a con.
- Crowds in general. It felt more crowded than ever this year. Decrease ticket sales by 10-15% and increase price by 25%. This won't happen, but man this would be nice. At one point the entire hallway was blocked at the food court there were so many people lined up to overpay for shitty food. (seriously people, walk a few blocks and there are amazing restaurants out there)
Overall, I enjoyed myself as always because it's PAX.
I loved most of it, but my main suggestion would be that there should be a meetup room, instead of having everyone trying to meet their favorite YouTuber based off of shady directions in a video posted before the event even started, just have them have a room where they can put a sign on a table or have some lounge chairs around so they can hang and meet without causing traffic jams everywhere.
So it looks like next year, PAX will be at a much warmer time. Hubways (and subways) should exist and be working properly.
Also, a pre- postscript: I've written enough. I could give input all day. Despite the length of this, I love the show and continue to ineffectively (but enjoyably) squander my time and opportunities while I'm there. I can't wait until the next one!
Hey, it's feedback time! FWIW, I like the show a lot, so I also like giving feedback. I live in the Boston metro area, so I've been to every PAX east so far (including the first one in the Hynes) and enjoy seeing the show evolve (and un-enjoy watching myself get older). Tickets are getting trickier, but I hope I can continue this habit. I don't know if the forum is the most organized place to do this _for you guys_. Have you thought about using some kind of online survey tool? Anyway, maybe the forum is easiest! I'm happy to provide feedback via whatever channel PA prefers.
If there's any feedback I haven't seen in the previous replies (or that I forgot that I saw) I'm going to bold it. Any non-bold stuff is stuff other people have also mentioned, and I'm just joining their choir.
Pros:
- Less smell from the interior carny food trucks - in some of the previous years, there were too many fried dough trucks, and I smelled like fried dough at the end of the day. Not this time.
- JSJoust was often available as an activity
- STEEL BATTALION - this should always be available. Coolest controllers ever.
- PAX XP - I didn't finish it, but I like scavenger hunts and prizes; so I approve of this idea
- Tabletop game loaning table seemed like it had a better selection this year - maybe i just got there at better times, but it seemed better
- Tabletop area had better booth layout - in the past, I felt like the tabletop exhibitor booths (in tabletop) were spread out a bit strangely, this time they seemed like their own mini-exhibitor floor that was open all night (awesome)
- less hallway congestion - don't get me wrong, it was still congested, but I never felt like I couldn't move, like last year
- Lanyard clip was much better--i.e. less likely to drop your badge--this year, especially for those of us toting multiple badges (BYOC, for one)
- Yogibo bean bag lounging area was a nice addition
- Enforcers were consistently helpful, friendly, and cheerful in my experience
- Expo Floor was still crowded, but easier to navigate somehow. Maybe the floating signs for the booths were more numerous and easy to see? I felt the layout was more logical and landmarks were easier to come by
- It seemed like there was more cosplay this year; to me that is a good thing. I haven't cosplayed, but I've always toyed with the idea (I used to make my own halloween costumes when I was a wee lad); maybe next year. I think cosplay boosts the whole atmosphere
- Food situation was less horrible - the Food court continues to be overpriced but surprisingly palatable (my chicken cashew nut from the "Wok" station was a good portion and surprisingly good; can't say the same for the flavorless italian sausage from "Heat"); Jimmy Johns across the street was good. I didn't notice the food trucks outside, but that's an excellent thing
- I don't remember any BO nightmares; granted I didn't go into all the rooms, but a few times over the years, I discovered rooms that had poor ventilation and were overwhelmed with stench; during 2015, I only observed very localized BO bubbles centered around a small number of individuals
Cons:
- too much walking - at first I liked the floor layout on the lower level, since it seemed to make better use of the queue area (even if just a buffer), but by Sunday, my aching feet had the opinion that BYOC and Tabletop should have more adjacency to the exhibitor hall; More on this in "ideas"
- alcohol - so, yeah, the lone Sam Adams bar in the food court just cannot meet demand; I realize this is a lot trickier to address, but it would be nice if it was possible to get a drink
- WTF UP WIT TEH WESTIN - my welcome letter said "official" show stuff would be going on over there. Maybe it did? How would I know? There wasn't anything obvious in the schedule, and it wasn't on any of the maps
- Speaking of maps, why wasn't there a map online - was this new? I could get a map in guidebook, but not on penny-arcade.com. I can't remember if this is how it was in previous years, but I see no reason why you couldn't find a map via the web. Everything else was on the PA website, except a map.
- BYOC security - I know this is a tough nut to crack, but we have to check in our machines, and we can't bring them out unless we check them out. This requires a scan of the sticker on your machine as well as on your BYOC badge. If they're not the same, you're likely trying to rob someone. However, nobody does any bag checks, so if you checked in a laptop, someone else can easily walk out with it. That said, I don't particularly want a bag check. I don't have a real solution for this, but it would be nice if there was one.
- Connectivity Issues - wow, worst yet! I could not text people (cellular), I could not count on wifi, either. Is PA/Reed allowed to set up their own, scalable wi-fi network with their own hardware? Maybe they should think about it. It wasn't a signal strength issue, either. I had full bars and nothing was getting through. It was just overloaded.
- Tabletop too small - Not sure if it really was smaller, or if it was more popular, or if Magic just stole more of its space, but I never managed to find a free table to set up myself with a LFG cone (by the way LFG cones = great idea) until it was too late to matter, because...
- Hours are too short - bring back 2am! I know it's a pain for taxis. It might seem counterintuitive, but if you stay open until 3am, that problem will be solved. The 2am taxi crunch is due to all the area bars' and clubs' last call hours
- No ACAM - sorry, Screw Attack was a very poor substitute; sorry if you're reading, Screw Attack! FWIW, I think Screw Attack would have been awesome as an exhibitor on the floor, but it's simply not a replacement for ACAM anymore than Geek Chic would have been (and I loved the Geek Chic booth-- I dragged several people to it)
- swag bags - after thinking about it, it was largely the same as last year: a free magic deck, a promotional card pack (though it consisted of only a single card, boo), and some coupons/adds beseeching me to visit some booths or giving me a free skin; yet somehow it was a big letdown. It was so insubstantial, so light, with almost nothing in it. I was even wishing there had been more ads (especially with coupons).
- raffles - I signed up for the Zotac raffle, but was sad that I had to walk over there for it, and then when I was there, it seemed like everyone was new to raffles. The Zotac people apparently thought that a lonely megaphone would be audible to people in the back of the raffle box. Fortunately, Enforcers helped out and would yell-repeat the numbers, and eventually Zotac got a dry-erase sign to show the current number being called. It was a mess though. I'd rather have been informed whether I'd won or not through email or text. It's not like showing up and being herded into a big cattle-pen was exposing me to more Zotac product anyway. You just stood in a throng and left when they were done reading numbers. It was a poor use of space and time whether you won or not.
- no Kickstarter room this year; or maybe I just couldn't find it? If so, then change complaint to: hard to locate Kickstarter room
- Diversity lounge? I know it's a touchy topic, but I think it would make more sense to call it "Diversity Showcase" instead of Diversity Lounge. The latter makes it sound like either only LGBA people are allowed (like the cospitality lounge), or it's the only place they are welcome, like some kind of smoking section. Besides, it seems pretty showcase-y to me.
Here's some more longform ideas. Feel free to skip unless you're totally digging what I wrote above.
Ideas:
- exhibitor hall organization - it was easier to navigate this year compared to last year, but how can we repeat that? Why not make the "lanes" that run through it more well-defined (i.e. avoid double-sized booths that block lanes) and then give them actual "street" names, maybe based on boston streets. The Back Bay has a nice system for this, starting at Arlington St, then Berkeley, Clarendon, Dartmouth, Exeter (see an alphabetic pattern?). Of course the Back Bay's perpendicular streets are more names, which I'd replace with numbers. You'd end up with a hybrid Boston/NYC approach. Then you could say that Booth X was near Darmouth and 6th in the expo hall. I think it might help a lot. It would be uber cool if there were actually sign posts placed around to reinforce this and make it more explicit, but the main thing would be making an uniform and uninterrupted "street grid"
- have raffle winners be contacted electronically, or have a sign-board at the booth displaying winning numbers, so those whose phones don't work (or ran out of battery; or are luddite) can still hoof it by to see if they won, and avoid a giant, pointless, standing-around-seeing-less-exhibitors (including the one hosting the raffle) mess.
- badges - What about selling non-transferrable badges? Badges that require a photo on them or something like that? If you _do_ need to cancel, you can pay a somewhat steep penalty and then PA/Reed (instead of Ebay) could resell the badge, obviously for this to work, providing a photo would be part of buying the badge; maybe the sale of non-transferrable badges can open up first (a couple days early?) followed by the sale of transferrable badges. This would _really_ cut down on scalping, but i'm sure has its own can of worms.
- loyalty - as someone who has gone to many PAXes, I wish the obstacles to continuing this hobby/tradition were not quite so steep. Even though I've been there every year, I still have to lose my mind trying to get a badge, and the last two years I didn't manage to snag 3-day badges, much to my sadness. That said, I know this is about money. Maybe loyalty can be based more on money spent at PAX than on simple attendance. Maybe you can get a certain amount of "PAX points" for attending, and then additional PAX points for any merch or food purchases at the show. People who exceed a certain number of PAX points could spend them to participate in an early badge sale. I'm not sure how doable this would be, and it might be a little extra work for the show-attendees (like me), but seriously, if I could save myself the stress of getting next year's budge by holding onto my receipts, I'd totally do it.
- One of my cons was that the show is too short. It's not that I think 37 hours over 3 days is a small amount of time, but a lot of time at the show is spent walking and waiting lines. If there were no lines (Disney Fast Pass system??) then maybe I wouldn't be asking for a longer show, but if things stay the way they are, I think it makes sense to request more time in the day to accommodate it. This year, I felt like all I had time to do was arrive, eat lunch, see a tiny fraction of the expo hall, participate in a raffle or tournament, eat dinner, then one or two tabletop games. Then it's suddenly 11pm and nearly time to go. It's not an empty day, but it doesn't feel like much. I think keeping the show open to 2am or 3am is an especially big boon to JSJousters, Classic Arcade Peeps (assuming ACAM is in the house), and especially Tabletop, because after 10pm, these areas become slightly less crowded. Hopefully with the show being so packed until 10pm, it's not too much money to keep it coasting into the wee hours with an overall smaller attendance.
- I don't know why there's a big bugaboo about holding PAX East on a weekday. Friday seems plenty crowded at 10am. If it started on Thursday or lasted until Monday, I'm not sure attendance would be dead. Badges sell out many months in advance, I think most people work this into their schedules. Of course, if the exhibitors can't do this, don't do it. As stunningly cool as tabletop, ACAM, other sections of the show are, the Exhibitor Hall is the backbone of the whole thing.
- More things like the Bioware room; in a perfect world where I am the absolute ruler, I'd love to see the rooms on Floor 1 more finely divided (maybe 12 instead of 7), with each room being an exciting destination room, maybe a roster like this: console freeplay, console tourney, classic console, steel battalion, #jsjoust room, Bioware, Kickstarter, ACAM, AFK, Jamspace, Diversity, and then some other thing I haven't come up with yet -- I think the goal is to make it so you have people distributed nicely across the space; to do so, you have to make these spaces appealing. FWIW, I think 2013 skewed a little more closely to what I'm suggesting here (but I don't think it went far enough).
- Use the Westin for additional panel space? Why not? Enforcers can check badges as they let people in. Easy. They're already there anyway. And who cares if badgeless people are walking around the queues? Another possibility: maybe even make the floor of the Westin that is attached to the Westin skybridge a "secure zone" so you can move between the two without bag checks (bag checks would have to happen at some other point)
The following idea is more longwinded than the rest, feel extra free to bail right here. There is nothing else beyond this point!
- so, as a BYOC person, I liked being in the back near the larger window. There was more light and it was a little quieter, and we were really close to Tabletop, which was awesome. That said, in previous years, BYOC was next to both Tabletop and the Exhibitor hall and felt far more central to things. Right now, I'd say that the layout is more columnar, with the exhibitor hall being one fat column, and then ESL/Queue being a column and Tabletop/PC being another. If you pull up the 2013 floor plan, Queue/Food court was, instead, another very fat column, and I'd characterize 2013's layout as more row-based. My question is: what would it be like if we had three rows of stuff adjacent to the Expo Floor? Say row 1 is the Queue/Food area (adjacent to the food court side), row 2 being Tabletop, and row 3 being the PC area and ESL. Each of these rows would stretch from the exhibitor hall all the way to the back of the building, so they'd be very short and and very wide. What would it solve? I think putting the food/queue area adjacent to the food court would help concentrate the food a bit (but not so much that it would cause congestion...it's still a hike from the food course to any location on floor 0). Also, there's not much on Floor 1 behind the food court, it would make that entire area more of a food destination, which is usually a purposeful "stay for a while" activity. It would always be inhabited, and doesn't require frequent backtracking and repeat trips (like, say, going between tabletop and the expo hall), or BYOC and either of those. Having both the PC area and Tabletop adjacent to the expo floor will cut down on the amount of walking between those areas (except for the people who grab tables or are in spots towards the back of the building, of course...since those areas will reach all the way back there). It will also distribute the usage of bathrooms more evenly, since you won't have bathrooms in the queue area that are relatively empty, and then bathrooms in the PC/Table area that are always full. What I can't assess the impact of is: will long narrow areas work? and will a "middle area" not bordered by a wall work?
Another PAXEast vet (6th) checking in. I had a good time but it just felt a bit off this year.
Pros:
4) The food trucks outside the convention center. Could of been advertised better somehow, though that may be an issue with the BCEC.
This. Cause in my prior post I had no idea about the outer food trucks or I would've hit those up everyday. I walked the whole con all three days and never saw anything advertising. Now that I know I can better prepare for next year finding them.
Food trucks outside were definitely awesome and I hope we can see more of them in the future. They were a bit iffy on Friday, as I don't think they really understood how they were going to get swamped, but they recovered nicely for Sat and Sunday.
Couple of things people have said that I'd like to comment on:
1) The line mess for Acquisitions Inc: Yeah, it was a mess, but there were extenuating circumstances that were dealt with as best they could. For folks not near the front of the line, you probably weren't aware that the elevator up front broke down with people stuck inside, so venue and fire department personnel were busy working on that. What that did was prevent loading the normal 600-700 people upstairs, since the line couldn't move past them, and delayed actually loading into the theatre. Both those things made the line extend much further down the hallway than normal and I think everyone, attendees and both Main and Dragonly Enforcers, did a great job dealing with that unexpected hiccup.
2) Show hours: I know people liked being able to hang out in table top and other areas until 2am, but there are issues with that. Some of the venues don't want the show going past midnight because of their staffing issues and rules. It's also extremely difficult on Enforcers and PA/Reed personnel. Some work shifts, but some are there all day... and all day means ~7am through a bit past whatever time the building closes. So, yeah, asking people to put in 17+ hours, basically catch a nap, and do it again for three/four days. Nope. Midnight close is much safer and healthier for the people working to put on a good show. Similarly with Expo hours, those folks are there at 7 or 8am each day and don't leave until after the hall closes and they are working the entire time, plus any after hours events they put on. Just saying, consider the people who aren't just wandering, standing in lines, chilling all day when you ask for the show hours to be longer.
1) The line mess for Acquisitions Inc: Yeah, it was a mess, but there were extenuating circumstances that were dealt with as best they could. For folks not near the front of the line, you probably weren't aware that the elevator up front broke down with people stuck inside, so venue and fire department personnel were busy working on that. What that did was prevent loading the normal 600-700 people upstairs, since the line couldn't move past them, and delayed actually loading into the theatre. Both those things made the line extend much further down the hallway than normal and I think everyone, attendees and both Main and Dragonly Enforcers, did a great job dealing with that unexpected hiccup.
That explains a lot, figured it had to be something like that. Wasn't there elevator issues in previous years as well? BCEC doesn't seem to have the most reliable of elevators.
- Diversity lounge? I know it's a touchy topic, but I think it would make more sense to call it "Diversity Showcase" instead of Diversity Lounge. The latter makes it sound like either only LGBA people are allowed (like the cospitality lounge), or it's the only place they are welcome, like some kind of smoking section. Besides, it seems pretty showcase-y to me.
Did you go to the lounge? Because the person who greeted me was VERY welcoming to everyone who came in. And there was a hang-out spot in the middle so yeah, I'd call it a lounge too, not unlike AFK lounge.
Another PAXEast vet (6th) checking in. I had a good time but it just felt a bit off this year.
Pros:
4) The food trucks outside the convention center. Could of been advertised better somehow, though that may be an issue with the BCEC.
This. Cause in my prior post I had no idea about the outer food trucks or I would've hit those up everyday. I walked the whole con all three days and never saw anything advertising. Now that I know I can better prepare for next year finding them.
I guess I lucked out, but just walking around Friday morning on the east side had me notice the food trucks right away; I typically take laps around the floors in the first morning to get a layout of the land before heading to the expo floor (also, PAX XP code hunting). Also by that exit there were signs pointing outside for food. However, it would be nice to have more signs elsewhere to indicate where the food trucks are. But that also brings up the BCEC's eatery options, which may be why it wasn't so highly publicized that there was better quality food for less money outside; it would take away from their revenue.
Le_Goat on
While I agree that being insensitive is an issue, so is being oversensitive.
The only area I personally saw that could use improvement (at least that's within PAX's purview) is the inconsistent nature of the midnight show close. If you stayed in Tabletop much past 11:30, you started getting progressively more insistent Enforcers reminding you to pack up because the show has to shut down right at midnight. Which is totally reasonable and not a problem. But then on our way out of the building, there were still matches starting up in the console freeplay/tournament rooms at 5-10 past midnight.
First year going to PAX. Had an immense amount of fun. Been going to conventions for years and I have to say that this one was particularly well organized and had less issues than others I've attended.
Pros:
1. Badge and Hotel purchase was incredibly smooth. Once I was in queue, that was it. Just jumped from one to the other and made all my arrangements. I wish other cons would do this.
2. Huge space. Once again, better than some other cons I attend.
3. Moving around. It was (relatively) easy to get around the con. I wasn't stuck behind some giant crush of people just to wait for an escalator. Some might not believe it but that is an actual problem at other conventions.
4. Food. The onsite food was actually much better than I expected, especially with the food trucks. I'm not a big hamburger and hotdog guy, so it was refreshing to have a lot of options right there.
5. Queueing. The queue management was great (though sometimes we weren't sure where to queue for a given panel) and we never had an issue determining if we wanted to queue up for a panel. At other conventions queue management is a nightmare that turns into a free for all when the doors open. Really appreciated the effort on this.
6. Indie Games. The Indie Game areas were awesome. We played lots of fun stuff in there and it was really the highlight of the convention.
7. Guidebook. Best app for conventions I've used. I've dealt with other ones and they have tended to be glorified pdf's. This was actually searchable and useful.
Improvements:
1. Too close to PAX South. Seemed like a lot of the big announcements were already out of the bag at South, so a lot of the con was spent just checking out the stuff we'd already heard about. It's great that there are more options for attendees, but the spacing between them could have been better.
2. Choke points. Certain booths attracted huge crowds that created areas that were difficult to maneuver through. LoL and Overwatch were tough to get by. Might be better for everyone if the big booths were off at the corners.
3. Game Queues. May not be anything that PAX can do something about, but for the big games it was near to impossible to actually play them. Maybe a ticketing system with scheduled times might help. Maybe something through the app. Don't really have an answer, but it definitely kept us from playing some stuff.
4. Tabletop freeplay. There was never a table open while we were there. Seems like there needs to be some kind of management over this. Didn't kill our fun, but we never did get to try out any of the games we wanted to check out.
5. Alternate schedules. We knew there was a BioWare Base. Didn't know that none of their stuff would be in the PAX guidebook and instead was on a poster board in front of the room. Would have loved to meet some of those folks but had no idea that it was going on.
6. Less screaming announcers. It felt appropriate over at the ESL areas where the tournaments were happening. Just created a cacophony of noise that we couldn't hear over on the Expo floor. I literally couldn't hear the guy who was telling me how to play Gigantic because of the announcers at the Guild Wars booth. I love Guild Wars. I play it. The announcer felt really gratuitous and unnecessary.
All in all it was a great time and I'd do it again. Might opt for South since I'm in Florida. The issues I ran into really weren't that bad (I've experienced far worse elsewhere) and were indicative of a convention of that size. You can't expect to have that many people in a space and not rub elbows. Looking forward to trying this again in the future. Thanks for a great experience.
TLDR version: Far more enjoyable than last year's PAX.
As for why? I'm not really the most typical video game player. I'd rather be on my 3DS than in front of a TV, would rather have something on my phone instead of a computer, and I'm a Mac/Linux user, not PC.
As such, in a lot of ways my enjoyment of PAX East involves largely from how much of a presence Nintendo has there. Last year, there was a single booth (Mutant Mudd). This year, Nintendo was there in full force with plenty of games, Capcom was pushing MH4U hard, and Puzzles&Dragons for the 3DS took up half of GungHo's sizable booth.
Indies section is another big one for me. It's probably an unpopular opinion, but I really don't think Supergiant Games should be in the Indies section. Last year, the line for Transistor was comparable (if not exceeding them) to the lines for the AAA-titles at the convention. That type of traffic just shouldn't be in the middle of Indies and the rest of the booths weren't setup to deal with Supergiant's line obstructing the walkways. This year that wasn't a problem because they were selling merch, but I hope that Projected Hype and Line sizes are taken into consideration in later years, especially when they come out with their next game. That said, Mini Metro was great, I loved that there was an Indie Cardgame area this year, and without the Transistor line in the way, I was able to play a lot more Indie games than last year.
The Expo Hall itself was great. It was organized really well this year and most problems came from groups of people just deciding to stop in the middle of the way. I liked how the Enforcers were keeping eyes on all heavily hyped lines so we didn't end up with complete blocks of people unable to move like The Crew / Ubisoft / Riot caused last year. It made claiming a spot on those lines (such as for Splatoon) a time consuming activity, but a big, big shoutout to the Enforcers making sure the walkways were clear during what must have been one of the least liked responsibilities throughout the weekend.
Was a tad weird that the lanyards were all Ubisoft like last year and the company didn't show up this time, though.
Now let's talk about the rest of the convention:
Handheld Lounge and Arcade
My apologies to one of the user's above me, but I much preferred Screwattack's arcade to the one last year. Screw Attack seemed to have brought more fighting game (or it felt that way due to their tourneys), more pinball machines, and my absolute favorite arcade game, racing machines.
The Handheld Lounge, seemingly largely due to assistance by Yogibo, was much better this year. Giving space to Behemoth and the Arcade didn't mess up moving traffic in and out of the hallway because of the space Handheld gained with the Yogibo lounge just around the corner; and it really WAS part of the Handheld Lounge in all but name, seemingly doubling it's size, reducing block ups with foot traffic, and giving the people (who last year typically came out of the Riot and Arcade rooms) who'd rather take a quick power nap a way to do so without taking up space a handheld or pokemon leaguer would want. On that last bit, I liked how Pokemon had it's own small room.
Panels
On the surface, the panels didn't seem all that hot unless you were a big Square Enix fan, who seemed to be going all out on Saturday.
But there were some really nice ones I'd mention:
1) Rooster Teeth - In a lot of ways, it was the end of an era. My gateway to Red vs Blue was Monty Oum, who I was watching since the (near) beginning with Haloid and Dead Fantasy I. Just hearing most of the questions being condolences to the team was heartwarming, most of all when the guy most known for throwing lemons at Monty Oum at PAX East every year (only for Oum to punch them out of the air, back at the guy) gave the team his iconic "Life" shirt and a box of Lemon cakes. We got the next Red vs Blue trailer, a Q&A confirmation that RWBY season 3 was still going to come out, but I was hoping for some news on their film or what Immersion is up to.
2) PAX East Indie Showcase - I don't think I really understood what I was walking into. I thought this would be a collection of trailers for indie games and their developers. Instead it was really just the developers talking about games we couldn't see. I did like listening to the stories about hurdles overcome when one of them was making Braid, but beyond that it was forgettable.
3) The Universality of Video Game Music - A great selection of panelists, good energy and synergy all around, these were people that were just a pleasure to listen to for their insights and for the internal playful bickering amongst themselves. Honestly, I liked this VGM panel better than last years big VGM composer panel.
Jamspace and Musical Quests
I was originally going to go to other panels, but...then I found this room after talking to this awesome keyboard player busking in the middle of the Expo Hall.
Typically, I justify the costs for going to PAX East based off the musical quests. The price per ticket has increased since, but a $35 day pass to play video games and ends with a concert by The Protomen? The Video Game Orchestra? JoCo and/or Paul&Storm? They've been what's worth the price of admission. With all respect to MC Frontalot, he alone was not worth a 3-day ($90) ticket, not with just a condensed hour on stage.
Jamspace was where I found my "worth the price of admission" this year. I skipped all other panels I was planning on going to and saw Brentalfloss and the Dancing Mario, the Busking Keyboard Player (part of Super Soul Bros) arranging a great collection of musicians to play with him including an awesome ocarina player who went over a half an hour over their established time that was completely worth it, and on Sunday listened to some really tight freeplay including this great female trained Jazz singer that showed up for a song. If MAGfest hadn't happened a month and a half earlier than PAX East, I'd of looked for a ticket by the end of the weekend.
Console Tourneys
I liked the setup this year, looked a lot bigger. I was a bit disappointed though that the projector setup seemed to be missing for the Grand Final matches like they had it last year.
3rd pax, tough to say if it tops the nostalgia-blind love of my first one, but had a much better time than last year.
The only thing that stuck out to me as an odd issue was having a private party for behemoth in the bcec on the Saturday night. It seemed to require enforcers there to help direct people away that were wandering about, ate into potential HHL space, etc. Personally I think that if it's not open to attendees in general, it probably should be offsite.
I can bemoan which games were or weren't there or who did or didn't have panels (no real D&D/DM panel this year) but there are a number of factors that go into what is available and can be largely outside of PA's hands.
Saturdays shuttle from the overflow lot dropped us off a good way away from any entrance, forcing one to walk up and around most of the bcec from the outside and then they directed you to the end of the line, which was going across the bridge. Probably should have been two lines, one going in each direction.
Thankfully though, bag checks seem to be better than last year, which is a plus.
Is there a reason why the Westins ballrooms haven't been used for panels, or other random stuff in general? Even though it seems like we can fit everything within the BCEC, wouldn't it make it easier to use the Westins ballrooms for something? If you moved one or two of the panel rooms to the Westin, that would free up room in the BCEC for a number of things - more TT space, a room for just vendors, or hell, even just a dining area.
- Diversity lounge? I know it's a touchy topic, but I think it would make more sense to call it "Diversity Showcase" instead of Diversity Lounge. The latter makes it sound like either only LGBA people are allowed (like the cospitality lounge), or it's the only place they are welcome, like some kind of smoking section. Besides, it seems pretty showcase-y to me.
Did you go to the lounge? Because the person who greeted me was VERY welcoming to everyone who came in. And there was a hang-out spot in the middle so yeah, I'd call it a lounge too, not unlike AFK lounge.
I did, in fact.
I have no criticism about the room itself, and I totally rested a bit on the bean bags in there and chatted a little with one of the exhibitors in there. Everyone in the room was cool. My only complaint about the room was that for such a swanky room, it seemed like it should have had more visitors. I don't know how they get the exhibitors for the room--do they invite them? Do the exhibitors pay? As much as the floor (I'd hope not)? Whatever the case, it's sad to host a booth in a place with extremely little foot traffic, especially when there's crazy foot traffic 40 feet behind you and 30 feet down.
I do like the whole "room" concept, and I even mentioned I'd love more rooms with things to do, but maybe it makes sense to give rooms to things with high demand across a larger swath of attendees, so it actually pulls people to them.
My apologies to one of the user's above me, but I much preferred Screwattack's arcade to the one last year. Screw Attack seemed to have brought more fighting game (or it felt that way due to their tourneys), more pinball machines, and my absolute favorite arcade game, racing machines.
I was one (of many) who preferred ACAM over ScrewAttack, but I think everyone is totally behind the notion that it'd be great to have more street fighter/fighting game tourneys. Thing is: I thought that'd be more appropriate in the console tournament room. In that sense, I didn't feel like ScrewAttack added anything different to the show, it became a slightly differently-skinned console tournament room that focused mainly on street fighter, whereas ACAM provided a retro 1980's video arcade. Screw Attack didn't add anything PAX didn't already have, whereas ACAM most certainly did.
And IIRC, ACAM had at least as many pinball machines as Screw Attack. And if they didn't, shame on them, because I know they have them!
One more thing!
Forgot to list this in my cons, but it seemed like all the badges this year possessed some strange magic that made them always face backwards. All of my photos of people have the badges facing backwards. It's uncanny. Next year I might use double-sided tape, I don't know.
Posts
Over the three years, I've been amazed at how much bigger it seems each year. I don't think the ticket count has increased, but standing on the skywalk and looking at the sea of people from one side of the hall to the other is impressive. In 2012 it was mainly the one half. In 2013, the tabletop area filled in nicely. This year it was wall-to-wall. As impressive as that is, it also comes with the downside of getting pushed around more, longer lines, and frustration at getting around.
The Swag Bags have really gone downhill. In 2012, my son spent a good 30 minutes looking through the Magic Backpack bag as if it was a hold over from Christmas. XBox Live card, Rift game, dice bag, magic cards, etc... very cool. This year... a plastic bag (not a Magic Backpack) with a magic deck, a single card from Superfight, an advert for Indiebox, and a League of Legends code. I waited 30 minutes in line for this? Walking out of line I was looking for a garbage can... I'm not kidding. I should have gone back to Wargaming.net and got another tee shirt.
Speaking of Wargaming.net... kudos, they even got my anime-loving daughter interested in tank battles. They obviously wanted to make a big splash and I think they succeeded.
Blizzard had a good booth, but there was no love for my current fav.. Diablo 3 to be had. Call me Old School, but they just kicked off Season 2 and have a huge patch coming. None of this is PA's fault of course.
One vendor I looked for, but didn't see this year was Reaper... I was hoping to sit my daughter down for a "paint and take" session. I've bought into all three kickstarters and am very much a Reaper Fanboy. Again, not PA's fault, but I wonder why they didn't come this year.
One highlight... I sat in on my first "acquisitions incorporated" session. This is something I've wanted to see live for years. I've been very impressed with the costumes and dwarven-forge-esk dungeons. But wait... no costumes... they didn't even dress up? A bare wooden table with the dungeon printed on 8.5x11 office paper. Mr. Perkins... is this the introduction to D&D you planned to give to hundreds of gamers? I'm sorry if this sounds harsh, but I've spent alot of time creating World Works Games dungeons and hand painting Reaper Bones figures for a single day dungeon crawl for four friends. Ask for help next time... I'm sure Dwarven Forge will fall on their sword to setup a presentation like that. Geek Chic too. I'll have to watch what I missed after I walked out.
Cosplay really peaked in 2013 for me... what a difference between 2012 & 2013. I saw costumes that looked hollywood quality. This year was not a good year. Maybe it's better on Saturdays. I know this isn't something PA controls, but I've bragged about this to my cosplay-loving daughter. At least she hasn't been to another Con, so she doesn't know how good it can be. I probably don't either. Big Daddy... where have you and Little Sister gone.
Overall, as Pax East gets older, it feels like it's getting lazier. I got the feeling this year like everything was organized very well like all the previous years, but there was that extra bit of attention that was lacking. Execution seemed flawless. Traffic, as crazy as it was, was as good as any TD Garden concert. All the Enforcers where very helpful directing lines and answering questions. Vendors drew huge crowds who waited an hour or more to play a demo. Most telling for me is that I don't feel like calling up my friends back home in Michigan and bragging about what they missed. I'm sure I'll go in the future because my children will want to. I'm not sure that I will be as excited for myself though.
SB
I'd like to apologize for this. There is no restriction on masks for attendees. After reading your post I contacted PA management, our Expo Enforcer Managers and also BCEC staff to see where this rule came from (as I was unaware of it and I'm the guy who tells cosplayers what they can and can not have).
There is no restriction from PAX or from the BCEC regarding masks worn by attendees.
There is a rule about Enforcers not wearing masks when they are working and I am guessing that this was misunderstood by the Enforcer in question and somehow that information was passed along word of mouth. I will be making a follow up post on our internal forum and guide and we will address it next year to ensure that no one thinks there is an Attendee mask restriction.
CONS:
Overall, despite this PAX feeling significantly worse than last year.. I am still planning on going next year. Like I said.. even the Worst PAX is still pretty good! I am hoping to be able to create a big group of friends (like an online community) that can hang out together during PAX.
Thought the panels this year were a nice mix. Thanks for accepting mine! I'm already excited to submit one for next year.
Someone upthread asked why the panels don't load in until shortly before the posted start time, and I can tell you that we were dealing with technical things up until almost the very last minute -- they didn't have the right HDMI cable for my laptop, so they had to grab one, but it was the wrong type, so they grabbed another laptop and transfered the file, but then it didn't have the right fonts for the presentation (so we had to install them from my computer), and then it wasn't transmitting to the screen.... we fixed it just as we opened the doors, five minutes before start time. It's a lot of tech to figure out in under 30 minutes if literally anything goes even slightly wrong. Props to the amazing enforcers who helped out though, and who gave me an extra two minutes to answer the last questions at my panel.
Thank you, I really appreciate you looking into this and getting an official answer about it.
https://allmylinks.com/topherxbeads
I'm duplicating a lot of the comments already posted, I'm sure.
Pros:
The larger size of the Expo Hall made it much easier to walk around except for a couple of choke points where lines were too close together in the aisles.
Capping the lines and having Enforcers kicking extra people out of the area helped with traffic flow a lot in the larger lines.
The panel I did see (CAH) had a huge line that was out of the way and left enough traffic flow around them if people needed to pass by. Great management there!
The food trucks by the side near tabletop was great! More, please! The price difference was minimal for what felt like twice the amount of food (like the meatball hero). I don't suppose the convention food court was too thrilled by that, though.
The extra beanbags by Yogibo (I think) helped by the handheld area, for comfortable crash space.
Having the inside food trucks spread around the outside helped to make them more accessible and gave more walking space around the outside.
The layout of Tabletop where most of the booths faced inwards towards the demo/free play area was great!
Cons:
The lack of AAA games did put a dent into things a little, but I'd like to see the ones there spread out more to help spread out the lines. The overload of people between Blizzard, Dreadnaught, Orcz Must Die, Smite, and Twitch choked that whole half of the area to the point that I nearly forgot that Gung Ho was there despite the size of their booth!
With presumably over 100k of people there, the popular lines capped within a minute of the queue opening. That's just insane!
Another vote for banning the in-booth raffles. Force the booths to use the queue room or email/twitter/[post on their board to announce winners at specific times instead. The masses by MSI and NewEgg were ugly. I get they want people to come back to their booths, but let's be honest, when hte masses hit the raffle time, nobody is looking at or buying anything there at that time. Nobody could do that even if they wanted to. Winners could be told to come by and if they do not claim their prizes by the end of the day, alternates will be picked to pick up in the morning. For Sunday, I guess you could have them give the last things away to people actually in the area, or in the queue hall or someplace specific.
The CAH line had been capped before the PAX_LInes tweet went out, and I was surprised since the usual Pax rule is "Don't line up until the last panel lets in". If we hadn't gotten there just before that panel let in, we would not have made it since we were one of the last 30-ish people inside! A little consistency there would help.
Advance notice of the layout of the Tabletop area and the indie booths would still be nice, especially within the Guidebook App. Heck, even at the show, there were so many vendors that I forgot where certain booths were located!
Better notification about the food trucks and the closing of the side doors would have helped a lot! I hate that people leaving right at 6 to get a smoke had to walk all the way around back to the front!
The lack of tables, chairs or any kind of crash space compared to previous years was surprising. Not just for food, but the space where the coat check was last year by the outside of tabletop could have been used for tables and chairs for people to eat and rest at. This meant handheld and the new beanbag areas were mobbed and people camped out areas for their groups, leaving no space for people to take quick breaks from walking.
I know there is no space now in the halls, but Tabletop is absolutely packed from about 11am on every day now, and needs more space!
Pax can't help here, but the PrePax night at the Westin was so packed, there were no tables open when I dropped by after 7 from dinner. It's great but scary to see how popular things have become!
Overall, though, I still think Pax is one of the best cons I can be at. With so many people there, you can only do so much, and despite the huge crowds and the mainstream public getting into Pax, it's safer and more inviting than other gathering that are this big. That's an amazing achievement!
While this might be true, I've been in plenty of panels where things were still not ready as it began. One of the better panels I went to the presenter forgot his projector cable for his mac. He said "This is a tech show, doesn't anyone have this cable" sure enough they did, and off to a good start. While it may not always be welcome, I guarentee you that there's enough help in the audience to fix any problem that might come up.
Expo hall layout was an improvement.
Enforcers vary between helpful and terrible. The panel line enforcers are especially terrible, often giving conflicting information. We could be told were ok where we are by one and then told we have to move by another. Only to see a larger group of people move in later, or even a group of enforcers in one case.
Demos by appointment would be nice, maybe with smartphone app so you can cancel? I get the issues here too on why its not feasible.
There needs to be incentive or psychology put in place to let vendors know that setting up a 4 hour line or crowd around your booth or inciting a riot doesn't build hype and get people interested, it just pisses every one off (good riddance riot). Right now I feel like it's in Vendors best interest to cause these issues.
I personally didnt notice raffles or issues with them? But they are a bane none the less. It's more incentivizing bad behavior.
A sign at the top of every escalator saying " <----albatros/bumblebee | C/D ---->" would make traversal on the upper levels so much easier.
Swag bags were non existent? Every day we saw noone with bags, and we could never get one ourselves. I heard they were barren this year, which is ok if so I suppose. Logistical/manpower issues aside, I would recommend putting in a card with 3-6 random mini-buttons on it, to foster trading with other users? Everyone seemed to have mini buttons this year. If swag bags plain go away I would be alright with it, if people want their MTG mini deck, they should be able to just walk over to a pile at WotC and pick them up.
"Hidden" booths. Behind a bunch of stores, I found booths showcasing moderate(not indie, not AAA) games and they were mostly empty. There should probably just be a "store" area for the floor like there is for board games.
Stuff that worked:
On the flip side of lines, we had to go get wristbands for the warframe event(it was super limited to be fair) 3 hours before the event, which wanted you to sign up online ahead of time(that I never got working), then we had to stand in line for an hour in the queue area. The hour is on us, we wanted good seats and it was worth it! Otherwise we could have shown up a lot later.
Everyone having minibuttons if they weren't 'legit' enough to get pinny arcade stuff was nice, in that it felt more standardized all around this year. I got some from people who made content I like and proudly wear them.
We really liked the food trucks, please keep them/get more. Food vendors were serving cold "hot" dogs
Show floor was so de-congested this year, we thought maybe people had problems getting in due to weather. I think it was just better layouts.
Q&A with prepicked questions (to keep the sob stories from before out) works amazingly well. Please keep this.
I understand the production nightmare that is setting up a panel with only 10-45 minutes prep time, but some panels had some really bad sound issues/balancing? The camera work/direction was pretty amazing on the big panels.
I always hear "what about people without a smart phone" I suppose there are those people, but there's no reason they cant be this AND a line
I love this idea! It would have been so helpful.
For the pannels that fill up really fast, have they concidered streaming it to another room where more people can watch if they want? My friends and I tried to stream a pannel via twitch on our phones, that we had missed the cap for, but where met with shotty internet. It would have been great if we could have went somewhere to watch it.
The line for the PAXamania panel didn't fill this year, not even close; the 1000+ seat theatre wasn't quite half full -- I'm curious, what made you think that it was?
We've had a number of panels where the lectern gets used my a moderator of some kind, but if you (or any other panelist) asks, the theatre enforcers should be happy to move the lectern, push tables together, or whatever - the more notice you can give, the better; and if something isn't possible, we should be able to come up with a solution that'll work.
- The Rock Band playing line ran like crud when people can't find four people and decide to run two people on stage for a six minute song or seeing two guys in New York baseball jerseys play three songs consecutively in each group of friends bands. (one Yankee and one Mets, btw you two both suck, not for the fact that you both cheer for the two teams of New York but you suck cause you buy fake, replica crap jerseys and not authentic. Get shrek'd, you plebs.)
- There should be a catalog printed out for people to know what song to play ahead of time instead of taking five minutes of everyone's time that already hasn't been wasted. Like have an enforcer/coordinator who uses the player controller and chooses the groups song. Also there was a umber of songs that me and my friends thought were available but weren't there, so we had to go to an immediate back up song cause dammit no catalog.
- No one should waste an hour in line with for a 4 minute song with what you presume are 6 groups in front of you. I get that people want the freedom of choice for songs, but when you don't play the game at all and choose to play "Through Fire and Flames" on medium and miss more than half the notes on all instruments including vocals, it's trolling to all the people actually know how to play the game and want to play the game. Set up a time limit for each song like 5-6 mins max unless you are serious business (expert all across for instruments).
- Finally, since there was no caretaker or enforcement on the playing peripherals, we always have damaged equipment, mostly being bass pedals being broken. Just ain't fun when your playing with instruments that prevent you from gold starring songs.
I just want to state these issues for me were very big issues that repeated itself a lot during the weekend.
This is my 6th PAX East, I been to E3 a few times now to never compare the these two events but I love PAX overall just due to the locale and friends that get to join me in debauchery. Looking forward to the next.
Pros:
-The Enforcer who I made laugh because I couldn't keep myself inside the lines was awesome (pretty much an inside joke between me and her).
- Indies INDIES INDIES! Man, they really were awesome this year. So many I hope I don't forget any of them.
- Watching Skeletor play drums on the Rock Band stage
- Nintendo employee whose Link amiibo fought my Bowser amiibo.
- PAXAMANIA
- Friends, it is always awesome bumping into friends whether it is in the elevator, lobby, show floor
- Free to play area
Cons:
- The Enforcer who gave me a hard time. While in line for PAXAMANIA, My friend cut the line to hand me my money and then left the line. I told the enforcer what was happening and apologized but he just gave me the death stare. When we got into the theater, I walked up to him and apologized again only to be stared at without him saying anything. Every year there is at least one enforcer who gives the rest a bad rap.
- I missed the Riot booth. I understand alot of people are glad it is gone but I love League of Legends. I still feel there is a good way to setup the booth and not be a hazard. Without Riot being there, Other booths stepped up as the fire hazard booth.
- Swag bags. I agree with others that the quality has gone down. Some people still claim they did not get one. I say get rid of the swag bags all together at this point.
- The stuff I wanted to do almost always overlapped with something else I wanted to do. Nobodies fault, just sucks.
Not a pro or con but I went to more parties this year. I feel like it made "My" PAX feel shorter. Some were awesome, some were not but I think next year I am going to stay at the convention longer.
PAX East 2019!
Badges [X] Hotel [X] Time off request [X]
https://www.pinnypals.com/pals/Streetlight345
Console availability isn't the only factor we figure in when asking people to check back in. Our software tracks # of copies of any given game available, and if current availability drops to zero (eg in this case, we have no more copies of blazblue available), we ask those attendees to return if their checkout time has expired. This way, we try to ~guarantee that if a title is in our library, at least one copy is available to check out at all times. Otherwise we let people play past their checkout time.
Oh yes, totally. I want to be clear, the panel enforcers were totally helpful here, both in moving the lectern and in getting the tech figured out. It just seemed to me that a lectern placed to the SIDE of the tables, rather than in the middle, would be the best "default" solution since it's easy to use or ignore, rather than putting it in the center where it's in the way. But I only have my own perspective -- I was doing a theater panel where it was important for everyone at the table to be able to see one another.
As for polling the audience for a cable solution -- yeah, I totally would have done that if I had to, but I'm glad I didn't have to, ultimately. I'd rather have the audience walk into my panel to be greeted by everything working smoothly and nicely than pull a "is there a doctor in the house", you know? Good to know for future events, though.
Pros:
-Expo hall layout seemed to be the best yet. Food areas in the corners of the hall instead of all together at one end as in previous years was a huge improvement, as was the layout of the busier booths. This may have had to do with the fact that many AAA developers and vendors were missing though (see cons).
-PC and console tourneys were great as always
-Enforcers were helpful and polite while being efficient
-Blizzard's Overwatch booth was awesome, from the layout of it (you could watch the gameplay from just about anywhere), to the length of the demo, and the number of available stations to play it (4 groups of 6v6 players)
Cons:
-Timing was awful this year. The first weekend in March is a terrible time to hold PAX East for many reasons. March is still very much winter in New England and the chances of there being a snowstorm the first week of the month is high. PAX was lucky this year given the heavy winter we've had. Also, many people (including myself) are pretty much in the middle of their school semesters. I found it difficult to work around PAX this year work-wise since I also work a full time job while going to school. Throw in GDC and the daylight savings time change, and it was an awful choice of a weekend. It felt like there were less cosplayers this year too due to the freezing cold outside. Let's not even get into the parking issues due to snow banks taking up all on-street parking spaces in the Seaport District.
-Lack of AAA developers and popular hardware vendors. I've always been excited to see 2K, Riot, Rockstar, etc. at PAX East. This year they were nowhere to be found. Not to mention the hardware vendors. I missed having ASUS, Corsair, and Nvidia there. Perhaps this had to do with the timing of the convention this year, since many developers are still coming off of the holidays and are likely not ready to show off their upcoming fall/winter titles so early? GDC may have also played a role here. It's hard to swallow the increasing costs of badges when the bigger names are pulling out.
-Lack of contests for swag. This year, it seemed that barely any booths were doing contests for prizes or swag, instead opting for more raffles. I remember doing a CS:GO contest for t-shirts at the Corsair booth last year, Typing of the Dead contest at Cooler Master, another typing speed competition at Newegg, staring contests at the eye drop booth, and a CS:GO tutorial speedrun contest at Plantronics in 2013. This year, contests like these were nowhere to be found and a lot more emphasis was put on raffles (which are always annoying and frustrating). Even Infinite Crisis gave out raffle tickets for doing their carnival games.
-The indie area was incredibly crowded this year probably due to there not being as many big names in the expo hall.
-Just an overall lack of things to do. My friends and I usually buy three day passes and spend all three days from morning to late at night doing various things, but this year, it felt like we were running out of things to see and check out. After we finished with the expo hall, we checked out some of the stuff upstairs like the free play areas, but even so, we were leaving earlier every night.
-Lack of interesting panels. This is something that has been getting worse year after year for PAX East. Gone are the developer panels like the one a couple of years ago where Hitman Absolution was showcased, or Bioshock Infinite. Instead, most panels are now just some random panelists that talk about video game related topics while trying really hard to be funny. We went to one panel this year and we ended up walking out after about 15 minutes because it was just boring and not funny.
Again, I sound like I'm hating on PAX East 2015 pretty hard but it was still a really fun time and I will be going next year with my friends. We might rethink going with the three day badge though if the trend of less developers and vendors continues.
I actually don't think you sound like you are hating on PAX East 2015 at all, since almost all of the things you said, I find myself nodding along. I know I will definitely cosplay next year though. That seems like the way to go. Because even if the overall convention comes off as "meh", cosplaying will still make it a good time for me
Pros
Minor gripe - the beach balls/animals being tossed around - I don't know who supplies these but they're sort of a good/evil thing. While it's fun tossing the ball around to others, some people are idiots and slam the ball into an unsuspecting persons face, elbow them in the face/chest, or worse - hit them with the ball while they're trying to drink something. I think looking into some other form of entertainment in the queue line would be a good idea...
Cons
Suggestions
Pros:
- Harmonix party. Listing this first because holy shit was it awesome. Thanks for doing what you guys do, keep it up.
- Tabletop free play is great. LFG cone worked perfectly and I enjoyed meeting some new people and playing some games.
- Indie games area. Very cool games with short or no lines.
- People. Everyone I interacted with was cool.
Cons:
- Table top free play area is WAY too small. Looked for a table to play on for a solid 20 minutes before going upstairs and playing in one of the dining areas. Increase tabletop area! Dumb stuff like halo tournaments seemed to be lackluster and taking up a ton of real estate that could be better used. Likewise for magic the gathering dedicated tables as has been mentioned earlier. We don't need that much space dedicated to magic cards.
- Swag bags. Horrible this year, just eliminate them if they're going to be this bad.
- Raffles on the show floor. Already mentioned dozens of times. Kill these please.
- Panels. Most of them seemed really boring this year. I did attend make a strip, D&D live, and giant bomb panel and those were pretty good as usual.
- Timing of con. I expect this will improve because nothing can be as bad as this year was. Winter in the north east is a horrible time to have a con.
- Crowds in general. It felt more crowded than ever this year. Decrease ticket sales by 10-15% and increase price by 25%. This won't happen, but man this would be nice. At one point the entire hallway was blocked at the food court there were so many people lined up to overpay for shitty food. (seriously people, walk a few blocks and there are amazing restaurants out there)
Overall, I enjoyed myself as always because it's PAX.
http://massconvention.com/events/2016/04
So it looks like next year, PAX will be at a much warmer time. Hubways (and subways) should exist and be working properly.
Also, a pre- postscript: I've written enough. I could give input all day. Despite the length of this, I love the show and continue to ineffectively (but enjoyably) squander my time and opportunities while I'm there. I can't wait until the next one!
Hey, it's feedback time! FWIW, I like the show a lot, so I also like giving feedback. I live in the Boston metro area, so I've been to every PAX east so far (including the first one in the Hynes) and enjoy seeing the show evolve (and un-enjoy watching myself get older). Tickets are getting trickier, but I hope I can continue this habit. I don't know if the forum is the most organized place to do this _for you guys_. Have you thought about using some kind of online survey tool? Anyway, maybe the forum is easiest! I'm happy to provide feedback via whatever channel PA prefers.
If there's any feedback I haven't seen in the previous replies (or that I forgot that I saw) I'm going to bold it. Any non-bold stuff is stuff other people have also mentioned, and I'm just joining their choir.
Pros:
- Less smell from the interior carny food trucks - in some of the previous years, there were too many fried dough trucks, and I smelled like fried dough at the end of the day. Not this time.
- JSJoust was often available as an activity
- STEEL BATTALION - this should always be available. Coolest controllers ever.
- PAX XP - I didn't finish it, but I like scavenger hunts and prizes; so I approve of this idea
- Tabletop game loaning table seemed like it had a better selection this year - maybe i just got there at better times, but it seemed better
- Tabletop area had better booth layout - in the past, I felt like the tabletop exhibitor booths (in tabletop) were spread out a bit strangely, this time they seemed like their own mini-exhibitor floor that was open all night (awesome)
- less hallway congestion - don't get me wrong, it was still congested, but I never felt like I couldn't move, like last year
- Lanyard clip was much better--i.e. less likely to drop your badge--this year, especially for those of us toting multiple badges (BYOC, for one)
- Yogibo bean bag lounging area was a nice addition
- Enforcers were consistently helpful, friendly, and cheerful in my experience
- Expo Floor was still crowded, but easier to navigate somehow. Maybe the floating signs for the booths were more numerous and easy to see? I felt the layout was more logical and landmarks were easier to come by
- It seemed like there was more cosplay this year; to me that is a good thing. I haven't cosplayed, but I've always toyed with the idea (I used to make my own halloween costumes when I was a wee lad); maybe next year. I think cosplay boosts the whole atmosphere
- Food situation was less horrible - the Food court continues to be overpriced but surprisingly palatable (my chicken cashew nut from the "Wok" station was a good portion and surprisingly good; can't say the same for the flavorless italian sausage from "Heat"); Jimmy Johns across the street was good. I didn't notice the food trucks outside, but that's an excellent thing
- I don't remember any BO nightmares; granted I didn't go into all the rooms, but a few times over the years, I discovered rooms that had poor ventilation and were overwhelmed with stench; during 2015, I only observed very localized BO bubbles centered around a small number of individuals
Cons:
- too much walking - at first I liked the floor layout on the lower level, since it seemed to make better use of the queue area (even if just a buffer), but by Sunday, my aching feet had the opinion that BYOC and Tabletop should have more adjacency to the exhibitor hall; More on this in "ideas"
- alcohol - so, yeah, the lone Sam Adams bar in the food court just cannot meet demand; I realize this is a lot trickier to address, but it would be nice if it was possible to get a drink
- WTF UP WIT TEH WESTIN - my welcome letter said "official" show stuff would be going on over there. Maybe it did? How would I know? There wasn't anything obvious in the schedule, and it wasn't on any of the maps
- Speaking of maps, why wasn't there a map online - was this new? I could get a map in guidebook, but not on penny-arcade.com. I can't remember if this is how it was in previous years, but I see no reason why you couldn't find a map via the web. Everything else was on the PA website, except a map.
- BYOC security - I know this is a tough nut to crack, but we have to check in our machines, and we can't bring them out unless we check them out. This requires a scan of the sticker on your machine as well as on your BYOC badge. If they're not the same, you're likely trying to rob someone. However, nobody does any bag checks, so if you checked in a laptop, someone else can easily walk out with it. That said, I don't particularly want a bag check. I don't have a real solution for this, but it would be nice if there was one.
- Connectivity Issues - wow, worst yet! I could not text people (cellular), I could not count on wifi, either. Is PA/Reed allowed to set up their own, scalable wi-fi network with their own hardware? Maybe they should think about it. It wasn't a signal strength issue, either. I had full bars and nothing was getting through. It was just overloaded.
- Tabletop too small - Not sure if it really was smaller, or if it was more popular, or if Magic just stole more of its space, but I never managed to find a free table to set up myself with a LFG cone (by the way LFG cones = great idea) until it was too late to matter, because...
- Hours are too short - bring back 2am! I know it's a pain for taxis. It might seem counterintuitive, but if you stay open until 3am, that problem will be solved. The 2am taxi crunch is due to all the area bars' and clubs' last call hours
- No ACAM - sorry, Screw Attack was a very poor substitute; sorry if you're reading, Screw Attack! FWIW, I think Screw Attack would have been awesome as an exhibitor on the floor, but it's simply not a replacement for ACAM anymore than Geek Chic would have been (and I loved the Geek Chic booth-- I dragged several people to it)
- swag bags - after thinking about it, it was largely the same as last year: a free magic deck, a promotional card pack (though it consisted of only a single card, boo), and some coupons/adds beseeching me to visit some booths or giving me a free skin; yet somehow it was a big letdown. It was so insubstantial, so light, with almost nothing in it. I was even wishing there had been more ads (especially with coupons).
- raffles - I signed up for the Zotac raffle, but was sad that I had to walk over there for it, and then when I was there, it seemed like everyone was new to raffles. The Zotac people apparently thought that a lonely megaphone would be audible to people in the back of the raffle box. Fortunately, Enforcers helped out and would yell-repeat the numbers, and eventually Zotac got a dry-erase sign to show the current number being called. It was a mess though. I'd rather have been informed whether I'd won or not through email or text. It's not like showing up and being herded into a big cattle-pen was exposing me to more Zotac product anyway. You just stood in a throng and left when they were done reading numbers. It was a poor use of space and time whether you won or not.
- no Kickstarter room this year; or maybe I just couldn't find it? If so, then change complaint to: hard to locate Kickstarter room
- Diversity lounge? I know it's a touchy topic, but I think it would make more sense to call it "Diversity Showcase" instead of Diversity Lounge. The latter makes it sound like either only LGBA people are allowed (like the cospitality lounge), or it's the only place they are welcome, like some kind of smoking section. Besides, it seems pretty showcase-y to me.
Here's some more longform ideas. Feel free to skip unless you're totally digging what I wrote above.
Ideas:
- exhibitor hall organization - it was easier to navigate this year compared to last year, but how can we repeat that? Why not make the "lanes" that run through it more well-defined (i.e. avoid double-sized booths that block lanes) and then give them actual "street" names, maybe based on boston streets. The Back Bay has a nice system for this, starting at Arlington St, then Berkeley, Clarendon, Dartmouth, Exeter (see an alphabetic pattern?). Of course the Back Bay's perpendicular streets are more names, which I'd replace with numbers. You'd end up with a hybrid Boston/NYC approach. Then you could say that Booth X was near Darmouth and 6th in the expo hall. I think it might help a lot. It would be uber cool if there were actually sign posts placed around to reinforce this and make it more explicit, but the main thing would be making an uniform and uninterrupted "street grid"
- have raffle winners be contacted electronically, or have a sign-board at the booth displaying winning numbers, so those whose phones don't work (or ran out of battery; or are luddite) can still hoof it by to see if they won, and avoid a giant, pointless, standing-around-seeing-less-exhibitors (including the one hosting the raffle) mess.
- badges - What about selling non-transferrable badges? Badges that require a photo on them or something like that? If you _do_ need to cancel, you can pay a somewhat steep penalty and then PA/Reed (instead of Ebay) could resell the badge, obviously for this to work, providing a photo would be part of buying the badge; maybe the sale of non-transferrable badges can open up first (a couple days early?) followed by the sale of transferrable badges. This would _really_ cut down on scalping, but i'm sure has its own can of worms.
- loyalty - as someone who has gone to many PAXes, I wish the obstacles to continuing this hobby/tradition were not quite so steep. Even though I've been there every year, I still have to lose my mind trying to get a badge, and the last two years I didn't manage to snag 3-day badges, much to my sadness. That said, I know this is about money. Maybe loyalty can be based more on money spent at PAX than on simple attendance. Maybe you can get a certain amount of "PAX points" for attending, and then additional PAX points for any merch or food purchases at the show. People who exceed a certain number of PAX points could spend them to participate in an early badge sale. I'm not sure how doable this would be, and it might be a little extra work for the show-attendees (like me), but seriously, if I could save myself the stress of getting next year's budge by holding onto my receipts, I'd totally do it.
- One of my cons was that the show is too short. It's not that I think 37 hours over 3 days is a small amount of time, but a lot of time at the show is spent walking and waiting lines. If there were no lines (Disney Fast Pass system??) then maybe I wouldn't be asking for a longer show, but if things stay the way they are, I think it makes sense to request more time in the day to accommodate it. This year, I felt like all I had time to do was arrive, eat lunch, see a tiny fraction of the expo hall, participate in a raffle or tournament, eat dinner, then one or two tabletop games. Then it's suddenly 11pm and nearly time to go. It's not an empty day, but it doesn't feel like much. I think keeping the show open to 2am or 3am is an especially big boon to JSJousters, Classic Arcade Peeps (assuming ACAM is in the house), and especially Tabletop, because after 10pm, these areas become slightly less crowded. Hopefully with the show being so packed until 10pm, it's not too much money to keep it coasting into the wee hours with an overall smaller attendance.
- I don't know why there's a big bugaboo about holding PAX East on a weekday. Friday seems plenty crowded at 10am. If it started on Thursday or lasted until Monday, I'm not sure attendance would be dead. Badges sell out many months in advance, I think most people work this into their schedules. Of course, if the exhibitors can't do this, don't do it. As stunningly cool as tabletop, ACAM, other sections of the show are, the Exhibitor Hall is the backbone of the whole thing.
- More things like the Bioware room; in a perfect world where I am the absolute ruler, I'd love to see the rooms on Floor 1 more finely divided (maybe 12 instead of 7), with each room being an exciting destination room, maybe a roster like this: console freeplay, console tourney, classic console, steel battalion, #jsjoust room, Bioware, Kickstarter, ACAM, AFK, Jamspace, Diversity, and then some other thing I haven't come up with yet -- I think the goal is to make it so you have people distributed nicely across the space; to do so, you have to make these spaces appealing. FWIW, I think 2013 skewed a little more closely to what I'm suggesting here (but I don't think it went far enough).
- Use the Westin for additional panel space? Why not? Enforcers can check badges as they let people in. Easy. They're already there anyway. And who cares if badgeless people are walking around the queues? Another possibility: maybe even make the floor of the Westin that is attached to the Westin skybridge a "secure zone" so you can move between the two without bag checks (bag checks would have to happen at some other point)
The following idea is more longwinded than the rest, feel extra free to bail right here. There is nothing else beyond this point!
- so, as a BYOC person, I liked being in the back near the larger window. There was more light and it was a little quieter, and we were really close to Tabletop, which was awesome. That said, in previous years, BYOC was next to both Tabletop and the Exhibitor hall and felt far more central to things. Right now, I'd say that the layout is more columnar, with the exhibitor hall being one fat column, and then ESL/Queue being a column and Tabletop/PC being another. If you pull up the 2013 floor plan, Queue/Food court was, instead, another very fat column, and I'd characterize 2013's layout as more row-based. My question is: what would it be like if we had three rows of stuff adjacent to the Expo Floor? Say row 1 is the Queue/Food area (adjacent to the food court side), row 2 being Tabletop, and row 3 being the PC area and ESL. Each of these rows would stretch from the exhibitor hall all the way to the back of the building, so they'd be very short and and very wide. What would it solve? I think putting the food/queue area adjacent to the food court would help concentrate the food a bit (but not so much that it would cause congestion...it's still a hike from the food course to any location on floor 0). Also, there's not much on Floor 1 behind the food court, it would make that entire area more of a food destination, which is usually a purposeful "stay for a while" activity. It would always be inhabited, and doesn't require frequent backtracking and repeat trips (like, say, going between tabletop and the expo hall), or BYOC and either of those. Having both the PC area and Tabletop adjacent to the expo floor will cut down on the amount of walking between those areas (except for the people who grab tables or are in spots towards the back of the building, of course...since those areas will reach all the way back there). It will also distribute the usage of bathrooms more evenly, since you won't have bathrooms in the queue area that are relatively empty, and then bathrooms in the PC/Table area that are always full. What I can't assess the impact of is: will long narrow areas work? and will a "middle area" not bordered by a wall work?
This. Cause in my prior post I had no idea about the outer food trucks or I would've hit those up everyday. I walked the whole con all three days and never saw anything advertising. Now that I know I can better prepare for next year finding them.
Couple of things people have said that I'd like to comment on:
1) The line mess for Acquisitions Inc: Yeah, it was a mess, but there were extenuating circumstances that were dealt with as best they could. For folks not near the front of the line, you probably weren't aware that the elevator up front broke down with people stuck inside, so venue and fire department personnel were busy working on that. What that did was prevent loading the normal 600-700 people upstairs, since the line couldn't move past them, and delayed actually loading into the theatre. Both those things made the line extend much further down the hallway than normal and I think everyone, attendees and both Main and Dragonly Enforcers, did a great job dealing with that unexpected hiccup.
2) Show hours: I know people liked being able to hang out in table top and other areas until 2am, but there are issues with that. Some of the venues don't want the show going past midnight because of their staffing issues and rules. It's also extremely difficult on Enforcers and PA/Reed personnel. Some work shifts, but some are there all day... and all day means ~7am through a bit past whatever time the building closes. So, yeah, asking people to put in 17+ hours, basically catch a nap, and do it again for three/four days. Nope. Midnight close is much safer and healthier for the people working to put on a good show. Similarly with Expo hours, those folks are there at 7 or 8am each day and don't leave until after the hall closes and they are working the entire time, plus any after hours events they put on. Just saying, consider the people who aren't just wandering, standing in lines, chilling all day when you ask for the show hours to be longer.
That explains a lot, figured it had to be something like that. Wasn't there elevator issues in previous years as well? BCEC doesn't seem to have the most reliable of elevators.
Did you go to the lounge? Because the person who greeted me was VERY welcoming to everyone who came in. And there was a hang-out spot in the middle so yeah, I'd call it a lounge too, not unlike AFK lounge.
Pros:
1. Badge and Hotel purchase was incredibly smooth. Once I was in queue, that was it. Just jumped from one to the other and made all my arrangements. I wish other cons would do this.
2. Huge space. Once again, better than some other cons I attend.
3. Moving around. It was (relatively) easy to get around the con. I wasn't stuck behind some giant crush of people just to wait for an escalator. Some might not believe it but that is an actual problem at other conventions.
4. Food. The onsite food was actually much better than I expected, especially with the food trucks. I'm not a big hamburger and hotdog guy, so it was refreshing to have a lot of options right there.
5. Queueing. The queue management was great (though sometimes we weren't sure where to queue for a given panel) and we never had an issue determining if we wanted to queue up for a panel. At other conventions queue management is a nightmare that turns into a free for all when the doors open. Really appreciated the effort on this.
6. Indie Games. The Indie Game areas were awesome. We played lots of fun stuff in there and it was really the highlight of the convention.
7. Guidebook. Best app for conventions I've used. I've dealt with other ones and they have tended to be glorified pdf's. This was actually searchable and useful.
Improvements:
1. Too close to PAX South. Seemed like a lot of the big announcements were already out of the bag at South, so a lot of the con was spent just checking out the stuff we'd already heard about. It's great that there are more options for attendees, but the spacing between them could have been better.
2. Choke points. Certain booths attracted huge crowds that created areas that were difficult to maneuver through. LoL and Overwatch were tough to get by. Might be better for everyone if the big booths were off at the corners.
3. Game Queues. May not be anything that PAX can do something about, but for the big games it was near to impossible to actually play them. Maybe a ticketing system with scheduled times might help. Maybe something through the app. Don't really have an answer, but it definitely kept us from playing some stuff.
4. Tabletop freeplay. There was never a table open while we were there. Seems like there needs to be some kind of management over this. Didn't kill our fun, but we never did get to try out any of the games we wanted to check out.
5. Alternate schedules. We knew there was a BioWare Base. Didn't know that none of their stuff would be in the PAX guidebook and instead was on a poster board in front of the room. Would have loved to meet some of those folks but had no idea that it was going on.
6. Less screaming announcers. It felt appropriate over at the ESL areas where the tournaments were happening. Just created a cacophony of noise that we couldn't hear over on the Expo floor. I literally couldn't hear the guy who was telling me how to play Gigantic because of the announcers at the Guild Wars booth. I love Guild Wars. I play it. The announcer felt really gratuitous and unnecessary.
All in all it was a great time and I'd do it again. Might opt for South since I'm in Florida. The issues I ran into really weren't that bad (I've experienced far worse elsewhere) and were indicative of a convention of that size. You can't expect to have that many people in a space and not rub elbows. Looking forward to trying this again in the future. Thanks for a great experience.
As for why? I'm not really the most typical video game player. I'd rather be on my 3DS than in front of a TV, would rather have something on my phone instead of a computer, and I'm a Mac/Linux user, not PC.
As such, in a lot of ways my enjoyment of PAX East involves largely from how much of a presence Nintendo has there. Last year, there was a single booth (Mutant Mudd). This year, Nintendo was there in full force with plenty of games, Capcom was pushing MH4U hard, and Puzzles&Dragons for the 3DS took up half of GungHo's sizable booth.
Indies section is another big one for me. It's probably an unpopular opinion, but I really don't think Supergiant Games should be in the Indies section. Last year, the line for Transistor was comparable (if not exceeding them) to the lines for the AAA-titles at the convention. That type of traffic just shouldn't be in the middle of Indies and the rest of the booths weren't setup to deal with Supergiant's line obstructing the walkways. This year that wasn't a problem because they were selling merch, but I hope that Projected Hype and Line sizes are taken into consideration in later years, especially when they come out with their next game. That said, Mini Metro was great, I loved that there was an Indie Cardgame area this year, and without the Transistor line in the way, I was able to play a lot more Indie games than last year.
The Expo Hall itself was great. It was organized really well this year and most problems came from groups of people just deciding to stop in the middle of the way. I liked how the Enforcers were keeping eyes on all heavily hyped lines so we didn't end up with complete blocks of people unable to move like The Crew / Ubisoft / Riot caused last year. It made claiming a spot on those lines (such as for Splatoon) a time consuming activity, but a big, big shoutout to the Enforcers making sure the walkways were clear during what must have been one of the least liked responsibilities throughout the weekend.
Was a tad weird that the lanyards were all Ubisoft like last year and the company didn't show up this time, though.
Now let's talk about the rest of the convention:
Handheld Lounge and Arcade
My apologies to one of the user's above me, but I much preferred Screwattack's arcade to the one last year. Screw Attack seemed to have brought more fighting game (or it felt that way due to their tourneys), more pinball machines, and my absolute favorite arcade game, racing machines.
The Handheld Lounge, seemingly largely due to assistance by Yogibo, was much better this year. Giving space to Behemoth and the Arcade didn't mess up moving traffic in and out of the hallway because of the space Handheld gained with the Yogibo lounge just around the corner; and it really WAS part of the Handheld Lounge in all but name, seemingly doubling it's size, reducing block ups with foot traffic, and giving the people (who last year typically came out of the Riot and Arcade rooms) who'd rather take a quick power nap a way to do so without taking up space a handheld or pokemon leaguer would want. On that last bit, I liked how Pokemon had it's own small room.
Panels
On the surface, the panels didn't seem all that hot unless you were a big Square Enix fan, who seemed to be going all out on Saturday.
But there were some really nice ones I'd mention:
1) Rooster Teeth - In a lot of ways, it was the end of an era. My gateway to Red vs Blue was Monty Oum, who I was watching since the (near) beginning with Haloid and Dead Fantasy I. Just hearing most of the questions being condolences to the team was heartwarming, most of all when the guy most known for throwing lemons at Monty Oum at PAX East every year (only for Oum to punch them out of the air, back at the guy) gave the team his iconic "Life" shirt and a box of Lemon cakes. We got the next Red vs Blue trailer, a Q&A confirmation that RWBY season 3 was still going to come out, but I was hoping for some news on their film or what Immersion is up to.
2) PAX East Indie Showcase - I don't think I really understood what I was walking into. I thought this would be a collection of trailers for indie games and their developers. Instead it was really just the developers talking about games we couldn't see. I did like listening to the stories about hurdles overcome when one of them was making Braid, but beyond that it was forgettable.
3) The Universality of Video Game Music - A great selection of panelists, good energy and synergy all around, these were people that were just a pleasure to listen to for their insights and for the internal playful bickering amongst themselves. Honestly, I liked this VGM panel better than last years big VGM composer panel.
Jamspace and Musical Quests
I was originally going to go to other panels, but...then I found this room after talking to this awesome keyboard player busking in the middle of the Expo Hall.
Typically, I justify the costs for going to PAX East based off the musical quests. The price per ticket has increased since, but a $35 day pass to play video games and ends with a concert by The Protomen? The Video Game Orchestra? JoCo and/or Paul&Storm? They've been what's worth the price of admission. With all respect to MC Frontalot, he alone was not worth a 3-day ($90) ticket, not with just a condensed hour on stage.
Jamspace was where I found my "worth the price of admission" this year. I skipped all other panels I was planning on going to and saw Brentalfloss and the Dancing Mario, the Busking Keyboard Player (part of Super Soul Bros) arranging a great collection of musicians to play with him including an awesome ocarina player who went over a half an hour over their established time that was completely worth it, and on Sunday listened to some really tight freeplay including this great female trained Jazz singer that showed up for a song. If MAGfest hadn't happened a month and a half earlier than PAX East, I'd of looked for a ticket by the end of the weekend.
Console Tourneys
I liked the setup this year, looked a lot bigger. I was a bit disappointed though that the projector setup seemed to be missing for the Grand Final matches like they had it last year.
The only thing that stuck out to me as an odd issue was having a private party for behemoth in the bcec on the Saturday night. It seemed to require enforcers there to help direct people away that were wandering about, ate into potential HHL space, etc. Personally I think that if it's not open to attendees in general, it probably should be offsite.
I can bemoan which games were or weren't there or who did or didn't have panels (no real D&D/DM panel this year) but there are a number of factors that go into what is available and can be largely outside of PA's hands.
Saturdays shuttle from the overflow lot dropped us off a good way away from any entrance, forcing one to walk up and around most of the bcec from the outside and then they directed you to the end of the line, which was going across the bridge. Probably should have been two lines, one going in each direction.
Thankfully though, bag checks seem to be better than last year, which is a plus.
I did, in fact.
I have no criticism about the room itself, and I totally rested a bit on the bean bags in there and chatted a little with one of the exhibitors in there. Everyone in the room was cool. My only complaint about the room was that for such a swanky room, it seemed like it should have had more visitors. I don't know how they get the exhibitors for the room--do they invite them? Do the exhibitors pay? As much as the floor (I'd hope not)? Whatever the case, it's sad to host a booth in a place with extremely little foot traffic, especially when there's crazy foot traffic 40 feet behind you and 30 feet down.
I do like the whole "room" concept, and I even mentioned I'd love more rooms with things to do, but maybe it makes sense to give rooms to things with high demand across a larger swath of attendees, so it actually pulls people to them.
I was one (of many) who preferred ACAM over ScrewAttack, but I think everyone is totally behind the notion that it'd be great to have more street fighter/fighting game tourneys. Thing is: I thought that'd be more appropriate in the console tournament room. In that sense, I didn't feel like ScrewAttack added anything different to the show, it became a slightly differently-skinned console tournament room that focused mainly on street fighter, whereas ACAM provided a retro 1980's video arcade. Screw Attack didn't add anything PAX didn't already have, whereas ACAM most certainly did.
And IIRC, ACAM had at least as many pinball machines as Screw Attack. And if they didn't, shame on them, because I know they have them!
One more thing!
Forgot to list this in my cons, but it seemed like all the badges this year possessed some strange magic that made them always face backwards. All of my photos of people have the badges facing backwards. It's uncanny. Next year I might use double-sided tape, I don't know.