While I only attended a few panels so far, all but one of them were good to really good to great (see: Dead Space panel). So, when my friend and I saw the panel for "MMO Behavior 101", we highlighted it and worked our schedule around it. Lining up an hour before still put us around the corner, wrapping around the staircase, down another hall. Fortunately, we were able to get in and the room was at capacity with standing room only.
And that's about as good as it got. You know your panel is bad when it starts off overfull, and you lose about 30% of your audience in the first 10 minutes. The panel was basically a circle jerk with the lead speaker promoting his book and the guy from The Syndicate talking about how awesome his 600 person guild is. The other two speakers could barely be heard even with the mic levels set to high.
I am hopeful that if a similar panel is at next year's PAX East discussing some aspect of MMOs, that they bring in people who actually work on MMOs.
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I was a bit disappointed in Death of Print, but mostly because a couple of the panelist were too damn quiet, and we were near the front. Still, it was good. And I'm sad I never got to actually talk to Jeff Green... Would go gay for him and all that...
He was also in the devs vs magazines panel, also excellent. Even the college humor panel was quite good.
Just not that interesting overall.
That's too bad about the Girls and Games one, I missed it but had high hopes.
oh, and the chiptune thing had a presentation in front of it that was really good i thought.
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Lord help me, I chose !Squirtle
And now I will line myself up to the firing squad:
I (get ready) disliked the PA Panels *covers head*.
Not because of Gabe and Tycho, they were entertaining beyond belief... I just found that a lot of the questions were basically the same question again and again... I came up with a formula that could be applied to many of the questions:
"You guys are awesome, it's awesome that you're awesome, here's an obscure joke that my friends and I really hope you get in the form of a question."
God bless that Gabe and Tycho could take those flat questions and make entertaining responses but seriously, we all know Gabe and Tycho are awesome, we're at their convention! You can give them a thanks, but then don't waste your question on something silly... bah... I don't really want to get into it... but those of you who felt the same way (I spoke to a few people about it around the center) know what I'm talking about.
PAX East Unboxing Parody
Also, ditto on the Next Generation of Geeks panel. No advice, just reflections on how geeky there kids are.
Other than that the panels I attended were great!
All things considered, though, I consider the fact that I was underwhelmed by only one panel out of the several I attended a pretty good track record.
I do agree on the Girls and Gaming. It just seemed that the only thing they talked about was stereotyping girls or girls in the industry. And after the first five questions about both these things, all the questions pretty much the same, they just kept coming.
As for MMO Behavior 101 .. I do agree they did a bit of hype on their books/movies/guilds but .. I think they were perfectly qualified for what they discussed. Sure, they weren't involved in MMO's themselves but developers aren't necessarily the best people to discuss in-game behaviors. The author studied geek culture and The Syndicate leader interacts with thousands of peoples, daily.
COLOR="Blue"]!Ravenclaw[/COLOR] House -- PAX Prime Tri-Wizard Drinking
PAX Pokemon League Dark Gym Leader
[Enforcer]
I agree. I have a 3 year old that is already a geek whom I brag about all the time. I do not need a room with over 500 people in it to do said bragging.
I was looking for much more content, specific issues that occur when raising geeks and how those issues are handled. I would have greatly appreciated information on the tough topic of how to protect my possibly geek child from the bullying that I endured as a geek child. (I have an idea, but I was surprised at the lack of content in that area.)
That being said, I really appreciate the resources that GeekDad provides the rest of us. I just had hoped for a more structured and informative and a lot less "Let me tell you about my kids" panel.
Also, I can count to "boat".
This. The College humour panel was a major disappointment.
I of course don't include the PA Q&As in that list, as those alternate between hilarious and touching.
Jeez. I was really angry that we showed up almost an hour before the panel and couldn't get in. Now I don't feel so bad.
A: "What do you want from me?!?!?"
Sunday's "Future of MMOs" panel was fantastic though. The moderator went right to questions, making it so the panelists had to stick to topics, not just shill for their products (though they plugged in clever and amusing ways, with a nice mix of earnest and snark).
How about the fact the Dungeon Master movie NEVER SHOWED. I have yet to see a reason why.
A MAJOR saving throw was made by the staff when Gabe showed up instead and gave us his personal tips and insights on being a DM. (TY TY TY Gabe!)
Couldn't agree more. Paul was freaking hysterical! My favorite bit was when he basically said the other three panalists were full of crap in regards to maintaining game balance by not selling the ubermostpowerfulbestest item. The others did walk their comments back a bit by saying that balance is important.
You can imagine my shock when the female members of the panel spent their time avoiding questions and flat out denying the frustrating experience of female gamers. I'm sorry, but simply saying that it doesn't matter what male gamers say, because "I'm going to kick their ass anyway" doesn't address the underlying problem of juvenille behavior toward female gamers.
This panel was timed perfectly to follow-up on the article recently put out by Game Informer discussing industry decisions toward female gamers and female characters within games, and these issues were left untouched. I was so disgusted by the panel that I walked out, frustrated that I could feel completely sold out by women who have an opportunity to be heard but instead choose to tow the industry line.
Since they didn't have the nerve to say it, I will: Attention Male Gamers, in the words of Will Wheaton, DON'T BE A DICK. Thank you.
Also, why are we continuing to segregate definitions of gamers as "gamer vs. girl-gamer"? Is it really necessary at this point? Does anyone care if they are gaming with girls? Is the phrase "girl gamer" just a marketing tool for focus groups for "Barbie Horse Adventures"? I don't get it.
A: "What do you want from me?!?!?"
I would have been excited to see less technical terms and more real world use of them.
I have to say though, that I saw quite a few GIRL gamers who were there FOR the attention. One girl in particular seemed to be following me around the expo . . . irritating me the whole way. Her high pitched squeals and her need to HANG on every halfway attractive male in the vicinity made me grit my teeth. When she happened to be in the same panel as I was and ended up being the center of attention by the room's camera crew I was ready to throw up.
The Alliance/Horde symbols in 3d was probably the best looking thing that wasn't designed by Nvidia specially for the card though.
Metro 2033 did seem like an interesting game.
While I had to leave half way through the xbox live enforcement panel, not that anything was wrong with it just that I was really surprised about how many kids (13 and under) were there. Half the theater was quite when he talked of the Helicopter.
I am a monster truck that walks like a man.
I don't think, sadly, that this was really the right panel for PAX, all told.
I will recommend that Geek Parents who are in the Northeast check out Arisia, in January (http://arisia.org), which has an entire track devoted to geekly things for kids 6 to about 12 (ranging from crafts to hands on science to learning to fence and other things that geek kids want to do), and this past year had panels on Anime/Manga for Parents, Geek Parenting, Poly Parenting, Social Media for Parents, and more of that ilk. Panels are much more moderated than I saw at PAX, and of course they're smaller (25 to 50 people, though my '40 Years of Sesame Street'. which was NOT parent-oriented, neared 70 by the end of the hour).
I'm really hopeful that PAX next year will do something about offering more panels, so that people aren't faced 10k people (assuming lots go and do other things) trying to decide between 3 panels at any one time. So many panels got *so* unfocused because of sheer numbers.
Thes.
That's so strange that you experienced the douchebaggery by male gamers at PAX, because I was pleasantly surprised at how friendly and normal everyone was the whole weekend. Everyone was very respectful, no one acted like it was unusual/special/weird that I played games as a female, no one made any 'get back in the kitchen' jokes, and the guys who flirted with me were just normal about it, not immature. That's really too bad that they avoided the more difficult issues at the panel, and it's really disappointing you get that kind of treatment. I guess I've been lucky in avoiding a large majority of that, both in online gaming (save for some inevitable 13 year olds on XBox Live) and in person.