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Something overheard that made me mad
MrScaryMuffin
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
This is hearsay so I cannot verify how much of it is true, but it does make me mad to think about it.
After PAX ended, my friends and I decided to use the Gameworks coupon we picked up at PAX to kill some time as we waited out rush hour before heading back home on the I5. We kept our PAX passes on (because they were cool, especially with the dogtags, 1up and xbox gamertags, and HDTS buttons) and stayed there until around 8pm.
Anyways, one of my friends overheard a Gameworks employee talking to another staff member. They were wondering which one of us had the real PAX pass. There was confusion until it was mentioned that they had encountered, at an earlier time, a group of teen boys who sported fake (photocopied perhaps?) PAX passes. Apparently only one of them had a real three day pass and the others were forged.
The PAX passes are not expensive. In fact, considering the experience, shows, events and schwag, they are well worth 40 bucks. There is no reason, then, that people should even consider forging the pass. However, I do realize that the pass isn't hard to forge, nor is it difficult to use a fake pass to get into the convention and other things. As criminology tells us, if there is an opportunity, people will take it (picture a hobo sleeping soundly on a bench with 10 bucks stuck to some gum on his shoe waving in the wind, begging you to grab it). Therefore, said opportunity must be eliminated, either by making the pass harder to forge, by ensuring a better pass check system or both.
Then again, I really doubt it's a big enough issue to raise alarm. But, like I said, just thinking about it makes me mad.
After PAX ended, my friends and I decided to use the Gameworks coupon we picked up at PAX to kill some time as we waited out rush hour before heading back home on the I5. We kept our PAX passes on (because they were cool, especially with the dogtags, 1up and xbox gamertags, and HDTS buttons) and stayed there until around 8pm.
Anyways, one of my friends overheard a Gameworks employee talking to another staff member. They were wondering which one of us had the real PAX pass. There was confusion until it was mentioned that they had encountered, at an earlier time, a group of teen boys who sported fake (photocopied perhaps?) PAX passes. Apparently only one of them had a real three day pass and the others were forged.
The PAX passes are not expensive. In fact, considering the experience, shows, events and schwag, they are well worth 40 bucks. There is no reason, then, that people should even consider forging the pass. However, I do realize that the pass isn't hard to forge, nor is it difficult to use a fake pass to get into the convention and other things. As criminology tells us, if there is an opportunity, people will take it (picture a hobo sleeping soundly on a bench with 10 bucks stuck to some gum on his shoe waving in the wind, begging you to grab it). Therefore, said opportunity must be eliminated, either by making the pass harder to forge, by ensuring a better pass check system or both.
Then again, I really doubt it's a big enough issue to raise alarm. But, like I said, just thinking about it makes me mad.
MrScaryMuffin on
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[edit] although, i must admit, i did use my pax 06 badge to get a second nvidia button, they couldn't tell the difference :P
On the other hand...$30 day passes are way too high so I'm not going to cry because a few punks got in free.
What did make me cry was the service at Gameworks. Wow! I know the bar was new and the employees were new but we were just two guys ordering bottled beer sitting 10 feet from the bar. The bartender tells us we have to wait for the server. Ten minutes later the server takes our order (of 2 beers) and he has to get permission from the manager to help us (he's not 21). 10 minutes later the server comes back and says he can take our order but he can't serve us so the bartender, who originally talked to us and has been standing at the bar 10 feet away, brings us two beers.
They were all very nice but it was comical watching them work.
That being said I have no doubt I could have gotten in with last years pass if i had wanted. A certain percentage of humans will always be jack holes. If you start doing things like making passes harder to forge you will start upping costs; the costs to make the pass and the cost to get them checked. Just like video game sellers have to live with people who rent out/re-sell their games, events have to accept that a certain percent of people will get in illegitametly.
The question is, is the cost of impleneting "security" worth the "costs" of not?
I don't think so.
So they showed up at 4:30ish on sunday with those copied passes. Yea, it happens, sucks for people that paid 3 day passes (I paid for one and BYOC) but they didn't see anything but smash cause they were waiting in line for signups and their turn. I don't think I'd wish that sort of fate on my worst enemy. Well. Maybe on him.
edit: 1-2 hours
I can't believe anyone at PAX (in my experience this weekend) would be so concerned about how much money everyone payed to get there. Frankly, those guys don't have all the money in the world to throw around, and it's lame to try and quantify your experience at PAX by the color of your badge.
So they didn't pay - did you stop to think that the planners of PAX didn't intend to do anything more stringent and secure?
They also had a room with $1,500,000+ of computers; half of which belonged to the PAX BYOC goers, but they were still trusting enough to let a simple badge be your entrance. The key is that the PAX goers are trusting, and yeah, every once in awhile, someone will abuse that trust.
My laptop was "stolen" on the first day in the BYOC room. Thankfully, I can say "stolen" because it was found two rows down - probably mistaken for someone else's laptop (which they reached under my seat to grab) (thanks Amber Fechko).
I'm sure that 3 guys, 10 guys, even a 100 guys; these were the last things that the PAX coordinators were concerned with, and I seriously doubt the exhibition vendors cared a lick. I'd put my 24" Dell on the table and bet that if Mike and Jerry (Gabe and Tycho) heard about it, they'd probably have torn the fake badges out and given them all real passes.
Who has a badge isn't what PAX is about. Everyone had a good time, and I think that's all that matters.
Not only did I pay for my 3 day pass, I barely paid for a Motel 6 room 15 miles away from PAX and food. ^_^ Being poor is no excuse. Because if it was, I should of got in free too. Then again, I am not a criminal. Sneaking in matters because it will raise future ticket costs because of added security and more advanced badges to stop people from copying them. Oh and if it didn't matter, tickets would be free.
I'm also sure that if the money were there, the tickets *would* be free. These are the guys that donated $10,000 to the ESA just to add to the egg on Jack Thompson's face. Unfortunately, Penny Arcade isn't a publicly held, multi-million dollar corporation. And if it were, the tickets would have been $150 (see E3 ticket prices).
Oh, that's right. They were.
If I had known before I found out at the fated Gameworks meeting we had later, I would have bought them all passes. It cost them enough to cross the state to get to the convention.
Like everyone says, PAX is not supported by a huge multi-million dollar corporation, if it were, I would laugh along and say "yea, screw the man" but it's Gabe and Ty that we're talking about here. They worked hard to get this thing together and it's a huge success. They won't be able to do this is unless the people attended help somewhat by buying the passes. It may be only a handful of people one year, but if some people can get away with it, others will do it too because, frankly, people will do what they can get away with. Then we'll get huge crowds and PAX may still go under. Naturally I'm exaggerating a bit, but it's not that hard to see.
As for security being able to detect fakes, it's not an easy thing to do when you have to look at 30k people and try to keep traffic moving. People can get through with fakes as easily as tricking school kids in a game of Simon Says: distract and misdirect.
I don't know, I just don't think it's right at all for this sort of thing to be happening even if there is no consequence for it and no one should be making excuses for it.
It's a good point.
But I don't know why you're saying it. It doesn't address the the reason they did what they did. They just wanted to enjoy a full day at PAX like the rest of us, but spent the 1-2 hours waiting for their turns in disorganization instead of that same 1 to 2 hours on the exhibition floor.
I don't know what you got out of pax, or what MOST people get out of PAX. But it hardly seems fair to punish them based on something beyond their control. Like Byu said, I don't think Gabe or Tycho would want that. So in a way they did steal from PAX, but on the flip side they were stolen from from poor prompt gaming schedules.
I'm just trying to say, things aren't black and white, there's a lot of grey in this. You can demonize them all you want, but put yourself in their shoes. I don't think you'd be happy if you showed up to enjoy yourself if you paid a hefty price and didn't even get to see the exhibition hall period.
If that happend to any of us the same would be true!
No exuses for breaking the rules? Do you really honestly think thats absolutely true? American Revolution? Civil Disobediance? Any time you EVER downloaded mp3s?
Things are not black and white my friend. There is such a thing as grey.
One good suggestion, longer exhibition hall hours because it was really a problem. Also, you didn't want to be late to said tourament/events so you had to run out earily and try to make it back before it closed. 3 days and I didn't even get to hang out at over 50% of the tables. I think it was because all the tourament areas were so out of the way or maybe because the exhibition hall was way to big to see without giving up a full day to stay inside and just look at everything.
Oh and the bottom line is they should of paid for the tickets or found a way to honestly attend PAX. They were not stealing bread to feed their family. PAX is a luxary for the hard workers that are willing to put money aside all year and pay for everything needed to attend PAX. It's like saving up for a system, you don't just steal one, you work for it or get your parents to buy it for you. lol
Yep. The people who did what the topic is about, all expressed an interested in getting the 3day pass next year just because of that reason.
I did BYOC and 3day pass, and while I'm not sure about doing BYOC next year, I sure as heck will still be doing a 3day pass.
To be honest, if I KNEW I was going to be close by next year I'd already be begging for ticket sales. I'm totally psyched for 08.
If their consequences were so dire they should've tried pleading their case with someone of importance, not by deceiving volunteers.
Come on man, you're talking about PAX, not serious business like taxation without representation, detention of people w/o charges, etc
FWIW, there's no excuse for it really. If they wanted to go to the exhibition hall with the knowledge that they were gonna be part of a long-ass tourney, they should have bought a 2 or 3-day pass. It's not much more money.
I'm poor as fuck, but I spent a shitton of money to get there anyway. Being poor is not an excuse; this is PAX, not stealing bread and milk to feed your children.
Get real.
At the same time, people are always gonna do crooked shit. What can you do? It happens all the time.
I can't even think of a good excuse not to pay, and the ones these people had were pretty terrible and bitchy in the first place.
My guess is that the guys went straight to forgery option, which IMHO, isn't a nice thing to do. If anything, they've now put the idea into a bunch of Gameworks employees heads (and perhaps others who read the forums), that if they want to be cheap, sneaking into PAX is easy to do.
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I'm a freaking PART TIME pizza delivery guy and I made enough money to get a 3 day pass, make the drive from Idaho to Seattle Wa (mmm yummy gas prices), pay for all my food and expenses, have money for my rent, cell phone, car payment, insurance, internet, electric yadda yadda
point is, I have a job that pays me 5.85 an hour right now and a crap ton of bills, theres no excuse to short PAX organizers the money they need to rent these convention centers and supply the entertainment and security. I've had my hand in event organization in the past (mostly just house parties and raves at convention centers, helping with deco and stage setup)
The bottom line is, you aren't ENTITLED to go to pax, and making B.S. Passes because you're irresponsible with your money doesn't mean anything to me or the bottom line.
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Dude, you really need to move to WA state. Minimum wage here is $7.85. I've been where your at. Was working 2 jobs/50-60 hours a week to pay bills back in MT.
That being said, these guys really should have pleaded their cases instead of breaking the law. Seriously, WTF.
If anyone is really concerned about the few that sneak in with faked passes just turn them in if you spot them. There are a limited number of PAX staff but many many attendees.
And then they can have a special page on the site where you can track the amount of time you don't move and are waiting in line. Or how many hours you spent in the Exhibit Hall. Or even how many times you used the restroom.
Big Brother is coming for you.
fixed
PAX is about scheduling what you want to do, and while someone may have assumed they'd only have to play their turn and then leave, the schedule right there has the block set aside for 5 hours of tournament play.
As for better security, I think (the old) E3's method would be fairly cheap. Print something extra (but easy to see) with ultraviolet dye so it can't be seen, and then just put black lights above the doorways, telling the enforcers and convention staff to just look for the glowing purple joystick or something.
Another example of why they might not have trusted the system was that this is their first time at PAX (like mine) and very few of the enforcers knew what was going on downstairs. Asking for directions was very chancy the first day, so why bother trying to go through some BS on 4:30 on Sunday? No one would have cared.
Their lives don't revolve around a good relationship with PAX, they just felt wronged and decided to come see the exhibition hall. I'm disappointed that only a couple people can understand that and refuse to see that because they didn't make a big fuss and whine and complain to enforcers about not getting to see the exhibition hall they should be punished.
Kazuo - They had no idea one tourny would take from 2 till exhibition close time. Don't forget you have to wait in line to sign up. And if you come with friends you want to watch them play too. If you went to a con with friends wouldn't you want to hang out with them? Especially since you traveled to visit them across the state?
I will say this again, many of you are not accepting that there is such a thing as grey. Life is not black and white. Complain all you want, but that doesn't change the fact that just because you think the Enforcers COULD have made an exception it doesn't mean they would have. If you want to use that logic my friends COULD have just bought one 3-day pass and made copies and gone every day. COULD have tried every tourny, COULD have made off with free stuff, COULD have stolen BYOC computers and COULD have sold fake 3day passes to make profit. But they didn't, all they wanted was to see the exhibition hall and didn't want to bother with the enforcers/system.
PS - I'd just like to say I thought the enforcers did a great job, I have a ton of confidence with you.
Just wanted to note... video games aren't "up" to $60... I payed $60 for Super Street Fighter 2: Turbo on the SNES 14 years ago. Prices are "down" to $50... dunno what you payed $60 for :P
Anyways, all I know is despite whatever points anyone makes here, this thread is just barely worth the bits it takes up in PA's SQL db. Beyond that, none of this matters :P
Anyway, you can't turn back time. Hopefully your friends, or anyone else reading this thread for that matter, will think differently next time they're in a similar situation.
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They weren't the only ones in the tournament, does everyone at that tournament deserve to cheat their way into PAX?
There is a such thing as grey. But what these people did wasn't gray at all. It's whiny and bitchy and a false sense of entitlement. Last year a group of people taking a road trip to PAX got pulled over and arrested for a night, thus missing Friday and Saturday of PAX. Now that is a gray area. Did they bitch and then scheme against PAX? No.
I'm actually attempting to do just that
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Second, the Smash Tourney goes from 4-9 PM. It's right on the schedule. When you sign up for an event, you commit yourself to that block of time. The expo hall closed at 7 PM. Yes, there is a lot of stuff to do at PAX. It is filled with amazing content that we spend a year planning. The whole point is that there are tough decision schedules you need to make as an attendee, mitigated by the fact the show is three days and therefore yes, requires a three day pass.
Please show your friends this post. Tell them to donate the difference to Child's Play and we'll call it good. Thanks.
-Robert
Moreover, being PAX, I thought they'd want to support it, not swindle it. Some use the logic that PAX is a smaller con so it’s okay; they’re not a big corporate entity so they’d not mind. But being a smaller con one also can reason that they’re more in need of the support. Furthermore, if the people in question spent so much money on transportation and hotel, shouldn't they, as one person mentioned, have shelled out the additional money for a three day pass? Even buying a second one day pass isn't much when compared to all they spent already just to get to PAX.
Although it’s true that what they did wasn’t horrible compared to all they could have done, wrong is still wrong. Murder is worse than theft, but the latter is still unethical. In the end, what bothers me most is the way some are justifying their actions without an apology. Maybe there was one but I missed it under a "sorry, but..." statement. It’s irksome when a person knows they shouldn’t have done something but still tries to defend it. Explain it, but don’t try to defend it under the much abused “shades of grey” argument. They could have come up with alternate solutions, but they didn’t even try.
"Why does it matter?"
Because it's just wrong.
Awesome Artist and Awesomer Friend.
Friday white
Sunday teal
BYOC was orange
Special guests Light blue
Media were yellow
It's actually the biggest gaming con now.
E3 shut it's doors to the public for the most part and is just scaled back overall. With that in mind I have the feeling that many more developers are going to want to set up shop at the next PaX, it's only going to get bigger.
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