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Potential East Coast PAX spinoff: Thoughts and Criticism
ElectricTurtle
SeeressWARegistered User regular
SeeressWARegistered User regular
I know that there is no official position to speak of on the issue of an east coast PAX, but ever since the idea of another PAX on the opposite coast has been floated, I've been thinking about the positive and negative potential that is bound therein, and I want to get some feedback on my ideas (I don't want a coast vs. coast flame war). Now that E3 is significantly diminished and PAX is poised to absorb a great deal of the market space E3 previously occupied, my concern is that the position of PAX is too fragile to leverage yet as a divided or franchised event.
Before advancing too far into my thesis, I should first address the matter of my own bias. Yes, I'm a native to the Seattle metro area, and I've not only been to every PAX but several Necrowombicons and Child's Play Charity Dinners. I will certainly admit that part of my worry is that building any kind of PAX spinoff somewhere else will somehow weaken or diminish the WA PAX experience. If not in scope then in the specific people attending (will the supertrips still run? I would miss not seeing those guys).
However, honestly my main concern is that an east coast PAX would weaken the identity of PAX. PAX has been evolving from the first year in a very productive direction, but it's fundamentally based on a network of volunteers that date back six years to the Necrowombicons (one of my friends has several times remarked that so many of the primary enforcers are original attendees of the Necrowombicons, and in fact I almost took up the black myself the first year but then I lost my job etc. etc.). This network does not exist on the east coast and would have to be built from scratch, endangering the entire PAX identity on unknown and untried individuals. Or a contract solution would have to be used, increasing operating costs but transfering performance liability from PAX to the contractors. Although that functionally mitigates risk, it would not prevent poor performance from damaging the PAX identity. These performance risks where an untried east coast staff are concerned could not be more potentially damaging than in light of the fact that explicitly or implicitly PAX is trying to take E3's mantle, and and east coast PAX would potentially draw too many people (due to higher population density over there) for an untested system to handle without overloading and collapsing. Hell, debatably that's already happened in both the first year and last year, which goes to show that a known and tested system can stand only so much strain and expansion. If an east coast PAX were unable to stand such strain, I think that the attendence numbers involved (once again due to density) would make such a failure a more public embarrassment, and such an operational overreach could tarnish the reputation of the entire PAX identity.
Assuming all of that is just paranoia, and no doomsday failure comes, there are other lesser concerns. Would the division of PAX result in retarding or even reversing the growth of the original? How many east coasters and midwesterners are coming here now that would not if they didn't "have to"? I myself would probably go to both events should a second PAX come to be, which also raises the question of how many in the east would keep coming west and how many in the west would go east? Of course this naturally assumes the two events would be at different times, they would have to be, after all, PAX would be next to nothing without Jerry and Mike. I don't reasonably expect that attendence to the original would fall, but what about the division of the sponsorship pool? How many sponsors would support both events, and how many just one? Which one? What would that division of sponsor money take away from the PAX experience?
There are potential positives I will grant. Two PAXes might more aggressively wrest market share from other events, especially but not exclusively the husk of E3 which never had an east coast presence aside from drawing journalists and such with its exclusive siren song. A second PAX would make life easier for the two thirds of the nation that lives over there, and would give me an excuse to travel more. It even could conceivably increase attendance on the west coast because fence-sitters will finally be able to see what it's like and become addicted to the point where now they will go to the original whereas before they would not.
There is more to this I'm sure.
Aside from convenience (please, I don't want 500 posts about how you want an east coast PAX because it will be more convenient. We all know and understand that), what does everybody think about this as an issue? Objectively, do the rewards outweigh the risks?
Before advancing too far into my thesis, I should first address the matter of my own bias. Yes, I'm a native to the Seattle metro area, and I've not only been to every PAX but several Necrowombicons and Child's Play Charity Dinners. I will certainly admit that part of my worry is that building any kind of PAX spinoff somewhere else will somehow weaken or diminish the WA PAX experience. If not in scope then in the specific people attending (will the supertrips still run? I would miss not seeing those guys).
However, honestly my main concern is that an east coast PAX would weaken the identity of PAX. PAX has been evolving from the first year in a very productive direction, but it's fundamentally based on a network of volunteers that date back six years to the Necrowombicons (one of my friends has several times remarked that so many of the primary enforcers are original attendees of the Necrowombicons, and in fact I almost took up the black myself the first year but then I lost my job etc. etc.). This network does not exist on the east coast and would have to be built from scratch, endangering the entire PAX identity on unknown and untried individuals. Or a contract solution would have to be used, increasing operating costs but transfering performance liability from PAX to the contractors. Although that functionally mitigates risk, it would not prevent poor performance from damaging the PAX identity. These performance risks where an untried east coast staff are concerned could not be more potentially damaging than in light of the fact that explicitly or implicitly PAX is trying to take E3's mantle, and and east coast PAX would potentially draw too many people (due to higher population density over there) for an untested system to handle without overloading and collapsing. Hell, debatably that's already happened in both the first year and last year, which goes to show that a known and tested system can stand only so much strain and expansion. If an east coast PAX were unable to stand such strain, I think that the attendence numbers involved (once again due to density) would make such a failure a more public embarrassment, and such an operational overreach could tarnish the reputation of the entire PAX identity.
Assuming all of that is just paranoia, and no doomsday failure comes, there are other lesser concerns. Would the division of PAX result in retarding or even reversing the growth of the original? How many east coasters and midwesterners are coming here now that would not if they didn't "have to"? I myself would probably go to both events should a second PAX come to be, which also raises the question of how many in the east would keep coming west and how many in the west would go east? Of course this naturally assumes the two events would be at different times, they would have to be, after all, PAX would be next to nothing without Jerry and Mike. I don't reasonably expect that attendence to the original would fall, but what about the division of the sponsorship pool? How many sponsors would support both events, and how many just one? Which one? What would that division of sponsor money take away from the PAX experience?
There are potential positives I will grant. Two PAXes might more aggressively wrest market share from other events, especially but not exclusively the husk of E3 which never had an east coast presence aside from drawing journalists and such with its exclusive siren song. A second PAX would make life easier for the two thirds of the nation that lives over there, and would give me an excuse to travel more. It even could conceivably increase attendance on the west coast because fence-sitters will finally be able to see what it's like and become addicted to the point where now they will go to the original whereas before they would not.
There is more to this I'm sure.
Aside from convenience (please, I don't want 500 posts about how you want an east coast PAX because it will be more convenient. We all know and understand that), what does everybody think about this as an issue? Objectively, do the rewards outweigh the risks?
ElectricTurtle on
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I don't believe PAX is supposed to be E3 or anything close to it. E3 was a commercial venture meant for electronics manufacturers to show off their wares. PAX is something for the gamers, not the businessmen and marketers. If they would like to come and try to attract our business, all the better, but that's beside the point. it's a big party for *us*, the gamers of the world.
That being said, an East Coast PAX (or maybe a less lopsided location PAX) would serve to this purpose. True, the big guys won't pour hundreds of thousands into one show anymore, so you can't expect the same expo floor experience, but the community, the people, and the je ne sais quoi of the experience would stay the same. it would just allow many of us who have more restrictive time/money/miles left on our car problems a better chance to be there and join in.
As far as the enforcers go...I'm sure you would be able to find a group of guys more than willing to don the black no matter WHAT city you go to. Every group is untested and unproven at some point in time, and one must remember that.
I will admit, I'm biased as well. I'm from the Southeast US, and PAX has been an inaccessible pipe dream for me for the past few years. Now that I'm out of college and have the money to go, I have a job and real life responsibilities that make supertrips out of the question, and even getting the cheaper flight rates (by being flexible in times) is a problem. Were there an East Coast PAX, or were PAX closer, I would be there in a heartbeat.
My two cents.
Also, having Child's Play charity events out here would be great.
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I would not change anything about the way PAX is run with regard to sponsorship, but it's important not to undervalue the tens of thousands (if not low hundreds of thousands) of dollars and say that sponsors can take it or leave it. Sponsors pay more to get in than attendees, and in part it's because of that that we are able to have all the musical acts and hot prizes and so forth. So while we don't need to whore PAX out by any means, if we divide PAX we need to consider how that will effect the sponsors, whether it will significantly or insignifcantly divide their interests which translates to the money invested in either event which further translates to how fun and awesome for us those events are (fun and awesome cost money). It's not just about the expo floor as you say. The expo floor is what the sponsors pay to do, which is separate from how that payment is used (concerts, prizes, infrastructure). Decreased expo floor use means less money for other things.
Returning to staff, of course everybody is untested in the beginning. The difference is the people over here had several years of very low-key informal events (the Necrowombicons) before the big dance, and the first PAX itself was unprecedented. The worry for the first PAX was "would anybody show up?" Not a high bar to meet, and the first PAX was decidely beyond successful. However, these several years later, there is now a standard for PAX, a standard that increases expectations every year, so much so that I think even last year was a little disappointing due to overcrowding and mismanagment of said crowds (not mention G&T broke the standing tradition of following the Omegathon final event with their own informal grudge match). I think that this year with the increased space PAX is going to blow the lid off of its own record, setting an even higher standard than ever before. This standard or identity or whatever you want to call it is not something that PA Inc. should risk lightly. If an east coast event were to be perceived as a failure (that failure doesn't even have to be any more real than perception) in any significant way by any significant number of people in contrast the west coast standard, it could damage future sponsorship of BOTH events. I do admit that this fear of failure may be paranoid, but I don't want to see any harm come to my favorite annual event, or any diminishment of capacity from a divided effort. (It didn't work for Diocletian.)
Also, just as someone who went to PAX and lives on the East Coast area, having one here would get a lot of the East Coast PA fans to go there, but I don't think it would diminish the West Coast one. The majority of people I met at PAX last year were from the Midwest and the West Coast, particularly the PNW area. The number of East Coast people who wanted to go but didn't (it's pretty costly getting out to Seattle, all said, and it's very tiring) is usually pretty high. If they did have an East Coast PAX (I'd suggest doing both PAX's at different times, like keep the Seattle one in late August and do the East Coast one in maybe May or early June), I'm sure that it would be mainly populated by that section of people. Also, if it was held in New York, that's one of the largest air travel hubs in the world. You would probably get a lot more of the European contingent to show up (I know there are PA Forumers from places like Denmark, the UK and the Netherlands who have expressed interest) than it would be for them to go all the way to Seattle. I know how much it costs to go from NY State to Seattle, I can only imagine the cost and more importantly the travel time. Nine hours on a plane isn't as cool as it sounds, let me assure you.
I don't think it would actually diminish the original PAX at all. There are still people who would willingly travel all the way to Seattle for PAX, and there would also be the "PAX-ier than Thou" crowd who would shun the East Coast one (even if they live closer) so that they can go to "the original one." I'm sure if you took a poll of people living east of the Mississippi, you'd find that most of them would be more willing to attend PAX if it was in New York or Atlanta or Boston or even DC, and most of them would be people who never went to PAX on the west coast mainly because of cost and time constraints. It's easy enough to save up money when you want to, but a lot of these people have college and jobs to get to, and travelling all the way across country for a weekend and then racing back just in time to get a few hours of sleep and then head into work/college/both? Most won't do it.
But shorten that travel time and the travel costs, and most of them will fly up the various turnpikes to get there. It's easier to attend something like PAX when you can drive there and/or back in an evening rather than spend several days driving or an entire day on a plane. And how many of the West Coast people would actually attend the East Coast PAX? Probably only a few a year, which is what you pretty much get from the East Coast people at PAX now.
Besides, I think it would expose more East Coast people to the actual PA community. Look at one of the Forumer Maps that have been made over the past few years, and the majority of the PA community is on the West Coast. I think that expanding to the East Coast and advertising it properly would not only draw in more people to PAX, but it would also probably draw more people from the East Coast into the PA community. This means more revenue. If they keep the revenue coming in, then having both PAX locations becomes more and more viable. Then what? PAX South maybe? PAX North located somewhere in Canada? PAX Europe? PAX Australia?
Is that really so bad?
How many Australians did you meet at PAX? British? Probably none. But I'm sure that if PAX was closer to them, they would go. It doesn't mean that suddenly 90,000 people who would have gone to the Seattle PAX are suddenly going to head off to Australia from places like California, Texas or Montana. And it's not like people from Seattle or Portland or Vancouver are going to forsake PAX in Seattle just because there's another one across the country.
I think if this goes right, it could be a great thing. PAX could become the next CES or the next SDCC or the next GenCon.
See what I'm getting at? It's not about the WA location, it's about the location of other people who wouldn't go there anyway for various reasons. Sure, maybe the GCCST might get smaller and smaller, but then again, maybe another one would crop up to make it to the East Coast one too.
People are still going to attend PAX in Seattle, regardless. The attendence has been growing exponentially every year, and with two, it would probably grow even more.
Why do you think McDonalds has so many locations worldwide? You don't see them bitching that making another location will take away from the business at the original location.
However you do make persuasive arguments with regard to demographics and accessibility. I had not thought about the European side of things. The more I think about it, the more I agree that an east coast PAX would do more good than harm, so long as it doesn't overreach the first time out and be stigmatized as an operational failure. What do you think of my idea of expanding events like the Child's Play Charity Dinner to use as a vanguard for evaluating potential east coast PAX volunteers?
I do think that it's never going to be possible to have a PAX on every continent or whatever, not only because of the concentration of PA readership, but remember, the whole event practically stands on the shoulders of ye olde Tycho & Gabe. They're only human, and even two events a year for them is going to represent a lot of stress, really fun stress, but it's not the sort of thing I think they could handle half a dozen+ times a year, and for the love of god we don't want to burn them out.
For that reason I am not reading that much text. My brain hurts already.
We have a winner. My current job involves one hour of work for every seven hours of subsidized whatever-the-hell-I-want unless something comes up.
What do you do?
Now it sucks.
Never ever let them give you a "promotion" and put you on salary.
Yeah F that. I would never be able to be salary, I like to be paid for the hours that I work :P
OR just get someone to invent a Star Trek like transporter.
You're driving several thousand miles for a 3 day gaming festival, i don't think anyone's going to hold it against you for not wanting to work those three days!
Wait... theres an E3?! :P
not anymore, now it's only e1 and e2
They got the Electronics part down but Entertainment is sorta lacking and Expo is just gone.
Edit: Come to think of it is more of it, isn't more Games then Electronics now anyway?
Well, from pure personal bias, any event that would interrupt the annual PAX in its present form, location, and schedule I would both hate and despise. I don't think any solution that requires robbing Peter to pay Paul is a good one. Beyond that, I think two a year is just inside the realm of reasonability, and dyaballikl is right as Mr. R. Khoo is the real man on top of the PAX pile. He is something of the Prime Minister to G&T's absolute monarchy, in that they have the final say and are a creative force, but Robert Khoo is the one who handles the nitty gritty day in and day out. So the question is, can Robert Khoo handle two a year? Having met the man, albeit briefly, I'd say yes, he's a goddamn dynamo. I would also say it's not possible to marginalize the function of G&T at PAX. Even though they might be more icing on the cake than cake at PAX these days, who wants cake without icing? Probably only godless, communist robots from space. Seriously though, the PA panels and G&T's role as MCs for the Omegathon and other aspects are not something that anything called "PAX" should be without.
But then, if you really want to organize a bunch of PA fans on the east coast, nobody's going to get in your way. Just don't call it PAX.
The staff at PA Inc. are not so dense as to be blind to what market space PAX occupies. The virtual implosion of what was E3 represents a huge market shift and a huge opportunity. E3 was essentially a giant middleman, standing between developers and consumers with the press as an interface. E3's near death experience speaks to its structural irrelevancy, but that doesn't mean that all the metric fucktons of cash that made E3 possible are necessarily going to leave the market space, they're simply going to change destinations. The big question is do those disenfranchised fat sacks of cash go to PAX or to the weaksauce, manufactured artificial attempt at being hip and cool manifested in the form of E for All, the ESA's (parent company of E3) developer to consumer show debuting in October. I know Robert Khoo, Jeff Kalles, and others are working full time to get game developers behind PAX, which is what makes the integrity of the PAX identity so important, and why I can throw myself into a paranoid fit about potentially overextended infrastructure underprepared to do a show on the other side of the country. Ultimately though I will trust them to make the proper assessment and compensation/mitigation of any risks.
If it will happen it will happen. If not then so what? I dont think this thread would convince anyone to make it happen if they already didnt want to :P
This is all great input and a great discussion. Please keep it going. Regardless, the one thing I do want to clarify is that no matter what happens, PAX West Coast will always exist, year after year.
*sniffle*
will you always love us?
Get the PAX 2008 Countdown widget and while away your sad, pathetic life watching it tick down the hours to PAX '08!
http://homepage.mac.com/ctishman
Forever and always?
They cast a shadow like a sundial in the morning light. It was half past 10.
given any thought to the solid gold khoo penis for omegathon prize?
but seriously, can anyone drop me some cliff notes on electricturtle's posts?
I'm afraid I can't help you, dyaballikl, in simplifying my posts much. It is a complex matter overall, one that involves a lot of synthetic understanding of market forces, human nature, and the organization and mobilization of people.
shit dude, that's deep.......
I'm all for it gents. ;-)
Yes it is. I looked on your very creative site and saw no one capable of picking someone up in my area, and there is no way I'm driving all the way there because I will definitely, and I mean definitely get lost. I'm only 18
If someone would pick me up in my area I would do it.
Why no greyhound? you think the bus has got cooties or something?
And getting back onto the main topic..
First off let me point out that I drove 36 hours out to PAX last year, and I'm doing it again. Second off, if there was an East Coast PAX, it would be at least a 10 hour drive for me... and I would do it.
But would PA be willing to do it? Being based out on the west coast, it makes sense that anything that they do should be out on the west coast. it's alot easier to plan and organize something that's going to be held down the road rather then 3 time zones away.
Plus, how many developers are based on the west coast? I'd think it's 98% at least. So along with PA having to deal with stuff across the country, so would the people in the expo hall. And how many of the current companies would be willing, or even able, to do the same?
And where on the east coast would you hold the expo? There's NYC... but that is stacking crazy on top of already crazy. I have no clue of any expos that are held out on the East Coast outside of NYC. Double that for anything tech or gaming related. The closest that comes to mine is GenCon... and that down in Indy.
You don't have to worry about getting a staff to do things... you will get enforcers wherever you go. And any convo center has got to have some union that they are required to work with. (I have no idea what the major set-up and takedown of PAX are and who handles it)
Beyond that, I'm done with my random talking and my windows needs to reset to update... so I guess that's it.
I'll be 18 and in college when PAX rolls around, and if there's one thing I'd want to do this year it would be to go to PAX. However, I'll still be living with my parents and they are bat shit fucking insane about being abducted/raped/killed/maimed by strangers. Do I think these people I'd be riding with mean me harm? No. But this is parents we're talking about.
I'm going to take this into consideration because I love games. I hate reading about LAN parties, conventions, game-a-thons and shit that I never get to go to because this shit happens in cities and mostly on the west coast.
Could you PM me and tell me how to get into contact with this guy in Hazelton?
EDIT: I meant the other guy PM me, not you.