Well, after the long journey home and a day to recover, the BrainLazy team has finally gotten a moment to reflect on our time there. Things didn't go exactly as planned (What convention ever does?), but we learned a lot, and in the end we got much more out of it than we'd initially scheduled. Join us, won't you, as we look at what we took home with us from PAX. Oh, and the first winners of our Avatar hoodie promotion are announced below, so if you commented already, be sure to hit the end of the article to see if you've won. Now, on with the learning…
Lesson 1: The Fire Marshal Doesn't Care If You Have A Media Tag.
BrainLazy, as a big fancy website with tens of readers, managed to snag media passes. These, we were assured, gave us access to any panel we chose. As we lined up for the Wil Wheaton Keynote, we discovered that assurances don't mean squat when a man with a badge tells you different. Policy may require that we be allowed to enter, but evidently there is some annoying little law about making sure people don't burn to death. So lets look at that Panel Schedule we whipped up.
Keynote - Wil Wheaton
PA Panel 1 & 2, PA Make a Strip, Closing Ceremonies
Nvidia Unveils The Next Generation of PC Gaming
Indies will Shoot You in the Knees
Losing Should Be Fun
Hi, I'm Machinima
Kotaku and Croal
Major Nelson Live
But Thou Must: Choice in Gaming
Now lets see what ones we made it to:
Nvidia Unveils The Next Generation of PC Gaming
Major Nelson Live
So… yeah. Not exactly 100% completion. Fortunately, as a side effect of ditching the panels, we learned our next important lesson.
Lesson 2: Scheduling Interviews Is For Suckers.
Our intrepid editor spent the better part of a month trying to wrangle every possible interview for our site, and we were pretty happy with what we landed. Then came the convention. It turns out what takes a two week long email thread with a dozen replies and careful negotiation and scheduling can be done in about 45 seconds on the show floor. Walking the exhibits during the bigger panels gave us time to talk to plenty of people we never would have thought would listen to us. As a result, pending successful post-processing, you can expect videos for the following games and companies to go up on youtube over the course of the next few days.
Breach
Limbo
Making History II
Shank
Ska Studios
Split Second
The Devil's Tuning Fork
Turtle Beach
Twisted Pixel
yyrgames
In addition, we managed to spend some time with games that either weren't ready for the camera or didn't give us an interview. We hope to get articles out on them soon, for those that we haven't already featured.
Battle Block Theater
Crackdown 2
Civilization V
Mafia II
Joe Danger
Splinter Cell Conviction
Two Worlds II
Lesson 3: Indie Developers Are Cool.
Don't get us wrong. We love talking to PR people. They know how to act, they know where to look, they know all of the talking points, and they are good on camera. Big companies send legions of them to staff the booths, and that's fantastic, because if they didn't we'd never get to talk to anyone about the huge studio releases. The smaller houses, though, are different. When you hit up Ska Studios or Twisted Pixel, you are talking to someone who knows the product inside and out because it is THEIR product. Shaking hands with a CEO after he personally demoes a game, and seeing how excited they are about what they are making, really makes you feel good about where indie gaming is going. Throw in the fact that they are some of the most genuine and friendly people you are likely to meet and it is no wonder we are already looking forward for our next chance to come face to face with these folks.
Lesson 4: Give Away Prizes
We learned other lessons (There Is Cold And Then There Is Boston Cold, Shepherd's Pie Rocks, Always Check the Bottom of Your Chair), but we know that most of you are only reading to see if you won the limited edition PAX East hoodie for your avatar, so we won't keep you waiting. Here are the names of the first round of lucky winners.
[Trombone Guy]
[ocoryo]
[fresh02_88]
And a special nod to [keggity] who, thanks to some tech issues, couldn't get a comment on the site just yet. Thanks for getting in contact with us and don't worry, we'll toss you one for making the effort.
Congratulations to our winners! Expect emails soon. And for those of you who didn't win, don't worry, we'll be drawing new names every few days until all of the hoodies are handed out, so if you want one, sign up and comment at least once to be entered to win. After your first comment your name goes in the hat, so feel free to say as much or as little as you want. You've got the same odds of winning with one comment as you do with a hundred.
That's it for now. Check back to this post periodically for links to our videos as they become available.
