PAX East 2020: Day Three

Dawn of the final day. 24 hours remain. Well actually, I’m writing this about 48 hours after the actual convention ended. Sorry, I had an 8 hour drive home and couldn’t exactly publish it Sunday night. Blogging and driving is highly discouraged by the police and society in general.

PAX East this year had to be my busiest yet. I didn’t attend any panels, visit any shops, or even participate in a single game at my beloved Jackbox Lounge. Instead, I hit every game on the floor that I could. And still, it was not enough time to try out maybe even a third of them.

It’s crazy how much this convention has changed since I started attending in 2012. It’s crazy how much I’ve changed since I started attending this convention. When I first went to PAX East, I was in my fourth year of college. Now I’ve been at J.P Morgan Chase for six years. I met Jeremy when he was first in high school. Now we work at the same company.

The first year we started going we had a big group of people attending with us. We piled into a single hotel room and slept on floors. Our days at the con were ended with trips out to restaurants in Boston. It was a lot to handle for the people who had to plan it all out – booking hotels, reserving restaurants, and planning travel. There were a lot of moving pieces.

We may have reached our max in 2016 or 2017, when I remember we had well over a dozen people with us. One year, a few folks even rented a huge airBnB house in South Boston. Chris and Grace were with us that year, as well as their friend Kylie Murphy. That may have been the last year we had a big group of us attending, but I can’t remember.

All of the years have sort of blurred together now. One year Andrew and Jeremy’s brother Dan attended with us, along with his wife Vicki, though I don’t remember if they were actually married at that point. I bumped into the both of them all over the con that year. They stayed in a room together with Andrew and I. Vicki got really sick and had to stay away from the con that Sunday.

That must have been the same year Pete and Chelsea came with us, because we were short one person that Sunday for our game of Watch the Skies, a so-called “mega game” involving an alien invasion of Earth. I played that with Pete, Chelsea, and Dan. Vicki was supposed to be the fifth person on our team, so we were short one. That was the game where I stole Pete’s nuclear launch codes and nuked Japan. Good times.

Was that also the same year I had to abandon dinner plans with everyone to go chill with Matt, Cathy, and our friend Alexis? She lives out in Boston and invited us out for dinner. We hit up a barbecue place in the outskirts of Boston and then played a game of Forbidden Island at her apartment. I caught an Uber Pool back to the hotel around midnight just as another Boston snowstorm blew in. I sat in the car with a random couple as we watched the snow settle on the city in the eerie silence.

While writing my posts this year I went back to read some of my old PAX East coverage and realized how much I talked about the things I did with people there. A lot of my old posts talk about people I’ve mentioned over and over again in this blog – Randall, Austin, Chris (my brother), Dave, Alfred, Kay, Brett, Matt, Cathy, Allie, Chris (Bennett, my friend), Grace, Pete, Chelsea, Dan, Vicki, and a few others I’m sure I missed (and Andrew and Jeremy, of course).

I’ve also seen a lot of Stevens folks over the years. Kevin Su comes to mind, an Enforcer for the con who I manage to bump into year after year in the most random of places. There was Matt Keyser last year. Same with Frank DiCola and Jack Kelly in 2018, who were showing off their mobile game Where Shadows Slumber. And then the huge Stevens party at the Harpoon Brewery that one year. I remember drinking way too much and coming within an inch of puking my guts out at the con the next day. I actually had to go lie down.

But I’ve been making a lot of new memories as well. There was that year Andrew and I went together and stayed in that bizarre Yotel place. The one that had glass walls for its bathrooms and played the Curb Your Enthusiasm theme in its elevators. There was also the giant 18-wheeler fire we encountered on our way to the con last year.

And this year I met up with Andrew and Jeremy at the hotel bar after the con each day to swap stories. We asked each other what we saw and gave each other recommendations. It felt good connecting like that after a long day on the con floor. I think Jeremy’s “game count” was 45 when we hopped on the shuttle by the end of the con. We also listened to some pretty great podcasts during our car rides. We had a lot of fun this year.

Gaming itself has changed a lot too. Gaming was once the domain of nerds, geeks, and outcasts. A lot of games were made with a solitary experience in mind. You played through a game’s campaign, alone and offline. Then when you finally found another gamer who shared your passion, you gushed about it. Those people became lifelong friends. Those people still are my friends to this day.

Gaming felt underground, in a way. You got made fun of a lot for being a gamer back when I was a kid. It wasn’t something you readily admitted to people for fear of being bullied. I was definitely bullied over it. No one really seemed to treat gaming as a serious hobby except for other gamers.

There was an entire culture surrounding geekiness, really. There was a shared interest in not just games but movies, television shows, and webcomics. Back before the Internet really blew up, memes and inside jokes traveled by word of mouth. If you wanted to watch an old cult-classic television show or movie, you had to find a second-hand copy of it collecting dust at the bottom of a bargain bin. Or you did it the old-fashioned way – you pirated it and burnt it onto a DVD.

But gaming is mainstream now. Hoards of people literally pay streamers money to watch them play games online. Board games have undergone a massive Renaissance. The U.S. Army now has a god damned eSports team.

I remember when my brother Chris introduced me to the concept of “speed running” way back in high school, maybe around 2004 or so. This was back when he had to go download video files off some janky looking website with the Quake dude on it.

Honestly, my initial reaction was “Who wants to spend time just watching people beat games as fast as possible?”

Turns out a shit ton of people do. Games Done Quick now has a huge following and has raised over $25 million dollars for charity. I guess Chris really knew what was up back then. He still routinely falls asleep on the couch watching speed runs.

And Dungeons & Dragons – motherfucking Dungeons & Dragons – was once considered something so geeky even I was afraid to dip my toes into it back in high school. It wasn’t as bad as being a LARPer, but that D&D shit was for losers. I was a geek, but I was still in hardcore denial that I was D&D geeky.

Now D&D is celebrated as a tool for imagination and socialization across a wide variety of media. There are scores of podcasts big and small dedicated to sharing friends’ game sessions. Stranger Things even ripped a bunch of their monsters from it.

And that’s not to say I’m resentful of the changes that have happened. Nothing is ever at rest. You can’t go home again. And honestly, who wants anything to stay the same forever? That is how subcultures stagnate and die.

But today’s new gamers have inherited a vastly different culture than when I first picked up a SNES controller at my neighbor’s house way back when I was in second grade. Gaming is ubiquitous now. Streamers are minor celebrities. Digital downloading has given people virtually unlimited access to nearly all of gaming history’s massive catalog. Nearly every person has a smart phone with an endless library of free mobile games at their disposal. Gaming is no longer relegated to basements and dorm rooms. It’s absolutely everywhere.

Even the very thing that started this entire convention – webcomics – has gone out of vogue. PAX stands for Penny Arcade C(X?)onvention eXpo. Penny Arcade was (and still is) one of the most popular gaming webcomics out there. Its following and influence are vast.

Back in high school I used to have an entire bookmarks folder dedicated to the dozens upon dozens of webcomics I used to read. I used to check them for updates obsessively. My friends read them too, and we used to talk about them together whenever we met up.

I haven’t read Penny Arcade or any webcomic since maybe 2013. That entire subculture has largely been subverted by YouTubers and streaming. The video format was simply more accessible to a much wider audience.

And for a hobby initially dedicated to secluded geeks, gaming is very social now. Competitive online is no longer a nice feature for games but the de facto standard. In fact, it’s more common to see large AAA with online multiplayer and no single player campaign at all.

That’s not to say that there are no single-player games at all out there. But each year, the AAA titles being released seem to trend more towards competitive online multiplayer. And all that multiplayer means that its becoming harder and harder to play games alone. Gaming demands being social now.

I know that think-piece after think-piece has been written about gate-keeping in video games, and that’s not what this is about. More people enjoying the same passion as me is great. I want that to happen. There is nothing that brings people together like enjoying a good game with each other.

Beyond my own nostalgic reminiscing, I guess what I’m really saying is that gaming is no longer a sub-culture, it is culture. It’s amusing to think back and realize just how different today’s gaming landscape is compared to where it was when I even first started coming to PAX East.

At this point it’s hard to imagine the rest of my life without video games. It’s my passion. It’s helped me form bonds with people that I will probably know for the rest of my life. I’ll probably be playing video games when I’m in a nursing home. They’ll bury with me a Nintendo 64.

What will gaming look like in another 10 years? What will it look like by the time my grandchildren are born? Will I still be attending PAX by then? Will PAX even still be around by then?

Oh shit, that’s right, I was supposed to be writing about the convention. Here are the games I saw on Sunday:

• Fall Guys: Basically a battle royale but with with Mario Party mini-games with an inflatable bounce-house aesthetic. Normally there are 100 60 (according to Andrew’s talk with a dev) competitors, but for the demo we had eight people with the remainder being controlled by AI. Jeremy won the game we all played together. Some of the mechanics still need ironing out but overall a great experience. Having 100 60 players together will be chaotic.
• Rawmen: A ramen-themed arena shooter. It was alright. Really bad bugs. My team sucked.
• Steel Battalion: Andrew, Jeremy, and I all made time this year for a round of this infamously complicated mech game. I already wrote a detailed description of this game in a previous year, so you can read about its byzantine mechanics there. I sucked.
• 30XX: Basically 20XX but better.
• Foregone: Another side-scrolling action game. Great graphics but nothing noteworthy for me personally.
• Greak: Memories of Azur: An excellent 2D puzzle platformer where you control three characters with different abilities to solve puzzles. I really enjoyed it. Nice hand-drawn artwork.
• Fugl: A really gorgeous voxel game that is basically a biome simulator where you control a bird flying through each environment. Tons of animals to find and “collect” in each biome. As far as I can tell, it doesn’t have much of a gameplay element though.
• Kerbal Space Program 2: I didn’t try this out, but they had a cool statue at their booth.
• Baldur’s Gate III: I also didn’t try this out, but their booth was an impressive castle display with a giant Mindflayer ship on top of it. Lot of hype surrounding this one lately. I have a feeling this one is going to be a blockbuster.
• Super Meat Boy Forever: This was fun. Basically regular Super Meat Boy but you can’t stop running, so there’s less time to think out moves and only one direction to go in. If you liked Super Meat Boy, you’ll like this game.
• Lucifer Within Us: This one has me really intrigued. It’s a mystery/detective game set in a sci-fi universe where demons can actually possess people and commit crimes. You need to interview witnesses and find discrepancies in their testimonies to solve those crimes. I’m interested in playing this one when it comes out.
• Ministry of Broadcast: This game was made for me. It’s a 2D puzzle platformer set in a dystopian Soviet country where you need to complete a bunch of dangerous obstacle courses in order to make it over the wall dividing your country. Same pitch black humor and atmosphere as Papers, Please. Graphics look exactly like Not Tonight, a Papers, Please clone that I played after trying it out at last year’s con. This game is already out, too. I’ll probably buy it.
• Industries of Titan: I was not as impressed as I’d hoped with this sci-fi city builder from the makers of Phantom Brigade. 
• Enter the Gungeon: House of the Gundead: I stopped to watch a few folks play this light-gun adaptation of Enter the Gungeon, which I’ve been watching Chris play a lot lately.
• Neon City Riders: My first stop at the PAX Rising booth this year, with only an hour left of the con to spare. A top-down beat-em-up with a very outdated punk aesthetic. Jeremy and I were not impressed.
• Hindsight 20/20 – Wrath of the Raakshasa: Yea, this game was just really bad. 
• Warrior Spirit: I literally have no idea what this game was supposed to be about. I played it for a minute before I got bored and walked away.
• Black Skylands: Honestly, I was too tired at this point to give a shit about anything but getting back to the hotel. My feet were killing me. 

So there you go. Look up their trailers if any of them sound interesting.

Top 5 Personal Picks of PAX East 2020:

1. Area Man Lives: I’ll probably be picking up a VR headset for Half Life: Alyx, and I think this will be a great game to go along with it. Really curious to see how well this game does. Looking forward to trying out the full version.
2. Ministry of Broadcast: Is this one cheating because it’s already out? I debated excluding from the list, but it’s almost certain I’ll be playing it soon, so I think it deserves a spot.
3. Root: I really liked the simplified nature of this turn-based RTS game. Apparently it’s based off of a board game. I want to give the full version a try when it comes out. It’s still on Kickstarter at the moment.
4. Fall Guys: This was a lot of fun to play with just eight players. I think the full version with 100 60 simultaneous players will be an absolute blast.
5. Help Will Come Tomorrow: I told myself I was done with difficult management games after Darkest Dungeon, but this one is calling to me. Maybe Frostpunk turned me back on to them.

See you all next year!