This year’s PAX Prime was the 17th PAX, which is pretty hard for me to believe. It also marks 10 years of PAX Prime here in Seattle. I can still remember my wife Kara, pregnant with Gabe during the very first PAX at the Meydenbauer convention center. He started 4th grade yesterday and will turn 10 years old on September 9th. It all happened so terrifyingly fast.
This year was an absolute blast. It was easily my favorite Acquisitions Inc. game ever. Chris Perkins really outdid himself this time and you can see the results over on the Twitch channel. We also had some great Q&A’s this year. The switch to pre-written questions happened at PAX East and I think the result is a much better experience. We’re able to get through a lot more questions and the ones we get tend to be really interesting. In fact the questions during the Make A Strip panel were so good I almost didn’t finish the comic. I kept stopping to think about my answers and pretty soon I looked down at the clock and saw I only had about 30 minutes left. I wasn’t close to finished and had to race to wrap it up in time.
During the second Q&A I was able to focus more on the questions since I didn’t have to draw a strip at the same time. I feel like we had another great selection and I think we gave some answers that people probably haven’t heard before. I made it a point to dig out the “Red Envelope” questions which are according to Robert who organized them all are the hard questions. We had one that asked if we were concerned about being considered corporate whores or something like that since we don’t seem to attack the industry as much as we used to. It’s a fair question although I might have worded it differently. It’s actually something Tycho and I have been very aware of recently and talked a lot about.
Maybe it’s just that we’re getting older, maybe it has something to do with being a parent. My guess is it’s a lot of stuff but the end result is we just aren’t as interested in being angry as we used to be. Personally I’d much rather spend a news post or a comic strip talking about an incredible game that I loved instead of some shit game that I hated. I don’t have the time or energy to devote to tearing games apart anymore. I love games and I’d much rather spend my time sharing the good stuff and maybe introducing you all to a game you would have missed otherwise. I’m not saying we’ll never take another crappy game to task but I think it’s going to be rare. I have fun playing games with my family and my friends. That’s what I’m interested in sharing these days.
PAX is a nice reminder of just how incredible games and gamers really are. I always come away from the show inspired by this community. Thanks to everyone who came out and made the show so amazing. I’m ready to do it all again next month in Australia.
-Gabe out
P.S.
I didn't get to play everything obviously, but my favorite game of the show was Gigantic!
