{"id":15556,"date":"2012-04-10T23:54:04","date_gmt":"2012-04-11T04:54:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=15556"},"modified":"2012-04-11T08:30:46","modified_gmt":"2012-04-11T13:30:46","slug":"pax-east-2012-the-exhibition-hall-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=15556","title":{"rendered":"Pax East 2012: The Exhibition Hall Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

splash_pax2012.jpg<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n

The Exhibition Hall is the part of PAX where companies buy booth space to show off their wares. It’s a strange place. Some booths are run by one or two person teams and offer a single indie game for a single platform. These ten-foot booths are basically the videogame equivalent of a lemonade stand. <\/p>\n

Other booths cover hundreds of square feet. They’re elaborate interactive sets with carpeting and fancy lighting, filled with gaming stations where you can sample the titles on display. Some places are staffed by developers, others by marketing types, and others by booth babes. (Not E3 style bikini girls. PAX doesn’t allow that. Here they’re more “spokesmodels”: Young, thin women who are paid to smile and keep the lines in order.) <\/p>\n

pax2012_map.jpg<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n

You can end up with some unknown basement developer sitting next door to Microsoft’s vast Kinect showcase. The crowds push and people tend to gather around the good stuff, which means that if you follow the path of least resistance you’ll be led away from the best things. <\/p>\n

I don’t like to play games on the show floor. Sometimes I make exceptions, but for the most part I’m more interested in talking to the presenter and hearing what they have to say. For me, gaming is a quiet, reflective experience. (At least until the game pisses me off and I have to perform a Renegade Interrupt on my controller.) The first few minutes with a game are really important to me, and I never want to spoil them by playing the game while footsore, standing on concrete, and trying to block out the churning sea of noise, shoving, and blinking lights. It’s like trying to read a book on a rollercoaster. I’m sure it’s possible, but its probably going to ruin both experiences at the same time. <\/p>\n

pax2012_floor.jpg<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n

I don’t like the idea of walking up to an unfamiliar game that’s just sitting there. What are the controls? Do I need to know the premise? What is my goal? Should I start the game over or just keep going from this spot where the last person walked away? I don’t want to cheat myself out of the “true” experience by blundering through some disjointed, unexplained fragment of the game. <\/p>\n

Imagine walking up to a machine showing off Deus Ex: Human Revolution<\/em> and taking control of Adam Jensen after some other player has dropped him into the Detroit sewers and walked away. You don’t know who you are, where you’re going, or why these dudes are shooting at you. You won’t know about Jensen’s augments or how to use them, and the whole place is cramped, cliche, and bland. You could be forgiven for walking away thinking, “What an unremarkable shooter!” That’s what I’m afraid of when I walk up to anything at PAX that’s more complicated than Tetris. <\/p>\n

So instead of playing games, I talk to people and take pictures of their displays. The pictures are my way of taking notes. In most cases the pictures aren’t for showing off to you, but for reminding me of the conversation. Then I can check out the game at my leisure once I’m home, in the proper gaming environment and mindset. <\/p>\n

I didn’t make it in to see Max Payne 3. I’ve made peace with the game. It doesn’t have the tone and style I loved about the first one, but it looks like a solid game in its own right. I like the stuff they’re tying to do to make the gameplay \/ cutscene \/ gameplay transitions feel smoother<\/a>. But I didn’t feel the need to wait in line for an hour to see it up close.<\/p>\n

In comparing notes with others, I see I missed as many games as I hit at PAX East 2012. This is astounding, given the sheer number of hours I spent on the show floor. I wanted to see everything, or at least walk by and glance at everything. But there is more videogame at this show than a single person can reasonably hope to sample in the allotted time. <\/p>\n

In the next few entries I’ll go over the stuff I did<\/em> manage to see. <\/p>\n

EDIT: Some people complained about the picture of Josh I posted yesterday. So here’s another:<\/p>\n

pax2012_josh2.jpg<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Exhibition Hall is the part of PAX where companies buy booth space to show off their wares. It’s a strange place. Some booths are run by one or two person teams and offer a single indie game for a single platform. These ten-foot booths are basically the videogame equivalent of a lemonade stand. Other […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[120],"tags":[196],"class_list":["post-15556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-videogames","tag-pax"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15556\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}