My time at PAX East 2025
The changes of a convention
Welcome to the non-fiction ‘Warthog Blog’ section of the Warthog Report, where I write about different subjects as they interest me. If you’re a subscriber and just want other parts of the newsletter, you can adjust which segments you receive here. Today is less introspective and more a recap of an event, though with some thoughts on how it has changed.
Once again I attended the gaming convention PAX East this year, and due to my one month hiatus I am only writing it about now over a month later. A delay like this is good, it has given me more time to reflect and think. And I don’t want to be too current and trendy. Anyway, onto the convention itself.
Something about the main show floor of PAX lacked the appeal that even last year had, it felt around the same size, there were interesting things to discover, but it also felt reduced. There was a much smaller selection of big or even medium names in the industry.
There was one especially notable absence, Nintendo. I thought for sure they would have a presence there to show off the Switch 2 and the new games. One of my fondest memories of PAX is playing Pikmin 3 there before the Wii U came out. So it was a surprise that their only presence was through Pokémon, the current state of which I am deepy bitter about and had no desire to visit the booth for.
I try not to get into the ‘armchair stakeholder’ mindset many get into these days, but it’s difficult to miss the many headlines about layoffs and closures in the gaming industry. The reduced state of the PAX show floor is simply a consequence of the overall state of things. With money growing tighter it makes sense that convention appearances would be one of the first things dropped.
It was still fun to simply wander around the expo floor, and there were games I enjoyed playing. One nice find was Cappy and Tappy, a platformer where in addition to your character you control a crane that drops Tetris blocks to serve as platforms. There is a co-op mode where one player platforms and the other drops blocks. Many will likely be a touch malicious with their block placement in co-op.
There was a booth showing off games from local developers, which I enjoyed seeing. And I have an indirect connection to one of those games, as the character designer for Ghost Jam is actually the artist who previously worked with me on a game jam project. It’s a rhythm game where you play as someone in the afterlife giving the deceased music therapy, instead of pressing every note you actually pick which notes you play to determine the mood of the song and thus how your patient responds.
Some games that I played at PAX I’ve been able to play since leaving the convention, like Cells to Singularity, an idle/clicker game where you build out a simulation of the universe, gaining currency and using it on upgrades to get more currency faster. I got a chance to play an update that hadn’t been released yet, and ended up downloading the current version to play on my phone during lines. Still waiting for the version I played at the show floor.
Another that I’ve since played at home was Desktop Survivors 98, a Vampire Survivors type game themed around the old Microsoft Windows experience. As part of that theme they were selling physical CD copies of the game that also included a download code for all the people with no disc drive and a trading card. I purchased a copy, put in the code and waited for the Steam release a little later due to not having a disc drive, and have had a lot of fun with it. It’s the first game of its genre I’ve played and makes me want to try others.
At conventions a good strategy for getting noticed is having a booth that looks distinctive, which is what drew me to Goblin Driving with its large truck booth. This is not a racing game, it is more comparable to an ‘only up’ type game, where you drive to reach the end and try not to fall off, and the controls do not feel like they are entirely in your favor. So the showfloor demo was a challenge, where making it to the game’s first check point awarded a set of goblin ears. And many did not make it.
My own first attempt was an immediate failure, even with a slow speed I ended up going right off the edge of the road due to poor handling. It was so bad I was given a second attempt, where I played even more cautiously and did make it to the checkpoint. Made for a good moment overall, going from instant failure in front of everyone to winning goblin ears I didn’t really want (I was in it for the sense of pride and accomplishment only).
There were also physical tabletop games at PAX, including trading card games, so I was able to play a demo game for Magic The Gathering which handed out sets of thirty card decks to take back. I would have liked to do more trading card game events, but time and the extra charge kept that off.
One memorable booth was Indiepocalypse, which sold USB Drives packaged in old cassette tape cases that have indie games pre-loaded onto them. That is a genius idea, I am taking many notes from this example when thinking about how to distribute my own works.
I’ll wrap up this section with not a game, but a controller. The Swish from is a controller that has two mouse trckingpads on the bottom at each side, four computer keys on the left, and two rows of four buttons each on the right. It’s a mixture of different control types, a presenter used a phrase like ‘a fighting game controller for other games’ when describing it. I’m not sure I’ll feel a need to seek it out for myself, but it dod work just fine when I tested it out.
Also in contrast to the show floor, I felt the panels were much more interesting this year. Normally only a few interest me, here I had quite a few I wanted to go to. A common theme of the panels that interested me was learning about ways to interact with games, be it different styles for running tabletop games or speedrunning.
The speedrunning panel actually got me into a mood to try some casual speedruns, or other kinds of challenge runs since those were covered as well. It emphaized that speedrunning is actually flexible, you can simply not do the crazy glitches, and you can just focus on personal best time or doing a race against a friend. So many have likely done some form of speedrunning without realizing it.
Since then I’ve speedrun the Merfight arcade mode and developed a one turn clear strategy for a level in Code Name S.T.E.A.M. Because nobody else is doing most of these I also get the world record on them by default, but there’s fun to be had in beating my own time, and then I move on to another thing without spending months grinding the same game each day to shave off a few seconds.
There was also a panel on Disney games where winning a trivia challenge earned me a booster pack for the Disney trading card game, which I do not play. But looking at the card art was neat, and I have been eying the game as a whole (pre-built decks only).
Another highlight off the show floor was the arcade room, which is exactly what it sounds like, a room filled with arcade machines, which have all been set to not require quarters. I enjoyed having the chance to play a few races of Mario Kart Arcade GP 2, there’s something about the arcade racing game set up of a chair, wheel, and pedals that just feels great.
Much of the arcade room was taken up by different fighting games. Getting a chance to play Street Fighter III Third Strike on an actual arcade machine after having played through other methods was an odd experience. I did not know how to position my fingers on the arcade cabinet with the signature six button layout, but fortunately Chun-Li only needs to press two buttons in most cases. This has reinforced my preference for gamepads for fighting games.
Other notable machines for me were Virtual-On and the arcade Final Fantasy Theathrythm. Virtual-On is a mech fighting game with a twin stick controller set up, a friend and I played a set in it and couldn’t fully figure out the controls, but it was another case where merely sitting in the arcade cab was part of the fun. Meanwhile the Final Fantasy Theatrhythm arcade game was in Japanese, so it took much struggling to actually get into a song, but was fun once I did.
Another new or at least relatively new addition was a cozy gaming room. This was a dimly lit room with some very nice beanbag chairs and ‘cozy games’ lining the walls. It was nice to just sit back for a little after walking all over the place, very pleasant. Though I will criticize the inclusion of Pikmin 2 among the games. Just because Pikmin is cute does not make it cozy, it’s all about stressful time management and your Pikmin will die a lot on the average playthrough.
As always with PAX, part of the fun was simply being there with friends. Sometimes you need a big event like this to see people or get a good chunk of time with them. Wandering the show floor is more fun with other people, especially when you swap advice on which things are worth checking out.
Even with the show floor having less to show, there was still plenty to do that made me wish I had more time and feel I made the right choice in coming. Naturally I’d want it to return to the heights of past years, but sometimes things need to shrink instead of grow. Let’s hope that the gaming industry returns to a state where PAX can go back to having all of the big names and a full show floor.