Conventions can be busy but fun, one of the first times I felt like I actually belonged in a community was going to a convention. And they’re a good opportunity to meet up with friends, so I went to the gaming convention PAX East this past weekend.
Instead of going into detail on all the various demos I played, I’ll be focusing on the overall experience I had day by day. Though I will detail the panels since I only attended a few.
What I like about the venue, the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, is that there are two sky (ceiling in this case) bridges over the exhibition floor, making it easy to go from one side to the other and examine what looks interesting from a distance.
I also brought my 3DS with me since conventions are one of the few places you can get streetpasses these days. It’s a fun excuse to bring it out again. My goal going in was to focus on some of the Streetpass Mii Plaza games: Puzzle Swap, Slot Car Rivals, and Battleground Z.
Now on to the day by day rough recap.
Day 1: Shot One Surprises
As I walked to the convention center I saw an electronic billboard showing convention related items, like a plushie of Spamton from Deltarune. It had been showing things for Women’s History Month the day before. The transition felt funny enough to make a point of including in this.
One of my priorities upon reaching the show floor was to find Shot One, an indie game kind of like air hockey that I played at last year’s PAX East and had heard would return. It turned out that Shot One is actually months away from release and they were too focused on that to make a demo build for PAX, so instead they brought a prototype of a fighting game spin-off.
For a three month old prototype with just one character it was a lot of fun, wish I could have played it more, but as the convention went on people realized it was great and there was always a crowd. And I’m excited that the main Shot One (now subtitled Universal League) is coming sooner than later.
Then I eyed Fraymakers, an indie crossover platform fighter I was aware of. I did a four player match and was approached for both feedback and requests for characters I’d like to see. I was surprised because I’d assumed the developers of crossover games would near instantly get sick of character requests.
It didn’t occur to me until well after that I have a published game with characters I’d like to see in a fighting game, but small game jam games don’t exactly have the big crossover audience. I ended up putting a word in for Supergiant Games representation (Pyre specifically), Jason from Blaster Master Zero, and a Merfight character. I’d love to begin a new reign of terror and oppression with Arctina in another game.
Continuing on the fighting game theme I attended a panel on the online evolution of the fighting game community after the pandemic shut down in person tournaments. There was a nice range of perspectives from tournament organizers to players to commentators.
I realized just how different things are for major fighting games compared to niche ones. There was a lot of talk about the official tournament series for Street Fighter and Tekken, how they can better balance offline and online play, while I was sitting in the audience thinking that niche fighters don’t have those concerns due to not having regular offline tournaments.
Everyone agreed that no matter how well online play progresses, just being with people in the same room has something irreplaceable to it that should be prioritized. Yet online play has important value in letting people get sparring partners from other countries, and for the official competitive leagues letting players compete without needing to travel all over the place, which is a notable economic barrier of entry to the big leagues.
I also took part in a Sonic Adventure 2 Battle tournament, specifically the on foot racing mode. Before it started I was sitting with some other players who swore everyone to a gentleman’s agreement to not pick Amy if the tournament organizers neglected to ban her. The tournament organizers banned her.
Unfortunately I lost in the first round and came away resenting that. I had some bad luck, rust, and a bad third party controller that nobody in the first round at least had won on. It was fun watching people play however, and made me want to challenge my own friends to it on our own time.
My biggest surprise came from just wandering the show floor however, there were less things on display this year compared to last and less notable publishers, no Yacht Club or Devolver Digital presence while Nintendo was strictly Pokémon.
The past year has been rather hard on the industry so I suppose this is a reflection of that. On the bright side less things on the show floor means more space to actually walk around, things weren’t as tightly packed together.
When I left the convention center, the electronic billboard showed things for women’s history month. Women have defeated Spamton.
Day 2: Return of the Guitar Hero
A new face appeared on the show floor, Sand Land, a game that stands out due to having art by the late Akira Toriyama. The line was capped so I waited to enter the line for a while before deciding to do other things. Then a friend told me I could just download the demo at home so I put it off the to do list because of how big of a commitment it would be to wait to wait in an hour long line.
I picked up a discount code for some merchandise based on Gigabash, a game I discovered and ended up liking a lot last year, so I grabbed a pin based on the character I usually play as. That ended up being my only merchandise purchase at the convention, which is good, because it’s easy to spend a lot at conventions.
My plan was to play in the Kirby Air Ride tournament and I was the twenty fifth person to sign up… for the wait list. I didn’t even bother checking back when it started with those odds. Instead I explored the convention floor more.
Even at a reduced quantity, there’s so much to discover on the expo floor that I felt like I was regularly coming upon new things with each walk through, passing by something my past routes hadn’t led me by before, or struggling to relocate something I previously saw.
To wrap up the day I played a song in Guitar Hero in the classic console room with a friend. It had been so long that I was unused to holding the plastic guitar controller and missed quite a few notes. Games like that carry a lot of memories, there was a very specific period of time where Guitar Hero and Rock Band were big and I experienced it.
Back home I finished Battleground Z in the 3DS Streetpass Miiplaza, letting me focus more on the other streetpass games, another thing whose time in the sun has passed.
Day 3: Come Again Another Day
I slept in later than the past two days, and it was raining (for the whole day it’d turn out). A text confirmed one of my friends has also not left their bed yet at a time where in previous days we were already there. And I had more things to do that morning before heading out.
That day’s panel for me was about Western Marches, a style of running TTRPGs that’s meant to be flexible in allowing a rotation of players and DM, focused mainly on combat and exploration rather than narrative. I hadn’t heard of it before, but it intrigued me because scheduling is the real villain of every TTRPG so any way to mitigate it is worth looking into.
The panelists outlined four variants of Western Marches based on their own experience with modifying it to better suit their own more narrative focused needs, which lined up with what I was looking for because I’m into TTRPGs for building stories. Those four modules were named after the panelists own campaigns and are:
Cathonian: This is run a bit like a TV show, with a head ‘showrunner’ DM who knows everything and other DMs who are in charge of individual story arcs and run everything by the showrunner, like individual episode writers. The presence of the showrunner lets the other DMs also be players in arcs they don’t run.
Xianese: Each region or zone of the world has its own DM in charge of its story, so the session can focus on the area covered by whichever DM is available. This is apparently the least tested of the modules.
Raustian: Miniature campaigns for different parties happening at the same time. Players who can’t make their usual session can join one of the other groups with a narrative excuse moving their character (teleportation accident was the stock go to one given).
Mysterian: Basically an altered version of the original Western Marches with drop in players, but using the systems built around the other three like XP as currency.
My question for the panel was what they thought the minimum number of players needed for these modules were, and they said any amount that isn’t playing solo should be able to do it.
It was made clear that running this style is a lot of work, requiring a lot of communication and note taking. But the reward is that your game schedule gets to be more flexible, so you get to play more often. I would like to give it a try at some point, but I’m strict with who I play TTRPGs with and already have a campaign with my group.
After the panel I got to play Steel Battalion by the free play area. Steel Battalion is a game where you control a mecha and use a special massive controller that simulates being in an actual cockpit. It has pedals you push with your feet. A game with this much complexity is hard to fully grasp in a single ten minute session, but it was a special experience playing with such an unconventional controller for the first time.
Between the large crowds and late start there wasn’t much else I was able to do that day. Saturday is always the busiest PAX East day so it’s no surprise that it was the most difficult day.
Day 4: DScalation
After the prior day I took measures to make sure I woke up at a time where I could experience more of the convention’s final day.
This was the day I finally dove into things I had been curious about. Like the Star Wars trading card game that had free demos in the tabletop area. Due to wanting to make it to a panel on time I couldn’t complete my game, but I enjoyed it and got given two cards for participating. I texted a picture of the cards to my friend with the caption ‘got free drugs.’
Despite not wanting to deal with a lot of the reality of actually playing TCGs like constantly buying new cards to deal with powercreep, there is in fact a devil on my shoulder consistently saying I should give it a try whenever I look at a pack. Pre constructed decks to play with friends should be alright, right? Surely just getting a Luke deck and then a General Grievous deck when he appears in one of the inevitable expansions won’t ruin me.
The panel I cut my trading card temptation short for was a retrospective for the DS, which turned out to be quite active. There was cheering and chanting when Pictochat came up for example. Spectrobes was mentioned by one of the panelists which hit me with a blast to the past, it was a monster collector game where you traveled between planets to dig up fossils and restore them to fight alien monsters.
The climax of the panel was creating a list of fifteen essential DS games. The panelists started with eleven titles, audience members suggested four more, and after that any addition request had to be paired with what title had to be removed.
Things got heated very quickly, it was an all out brawl between the different DS classics, of which there were a lot of varying levels of popularity. Scribblenauts enthusiasts utilized their thesauruses to initiate an incursion, Drawn to Life players force fed people crayons, Nintendog die hards cried havoc and let loose the dogs of war, Spectrobes and Fossil Fighter fans dueled for the title of best dead monster collector series that revolves around fossils and us Spectrobes fans fucking won take that Fossil Fighters fandom! I barely escaped with my life but it was worth it.
Okay now that I’m done exaggerating the story for comedic effect (no actual hate to Fossil Fighters), each suggestion did tend to get cheers only to turn into shocked gasps and boos when the removal suggestion came. A suggestion had to win over three of the five judges, so people had to play around their stances, there was a whole metagame going on with picking targets.
I’ve already forgotten exactly what was on the final list because it was wrong. For example Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors got dropped from the list, my memory is already hazy but I think it was collateral damage of Pokémon fandom infighting over which mainline title got to be in the list.
As a serious criticism, I do think ports and remakes should have been disqualified. The idea of taking Chrono Trigger DS off the list got mass booing because it’s Chrono Trigger, but also it’s Chrono Trigger, originally for the SNES. While DS was the version I played and the new features for it are excellent, I’m not sure an enhanced port should be considered an essential when the SNES version is still a classic.
Still the panel was a lot of fun and made me appreciate just how vast the DS library was, fifteen was far too small of a number and that made for very difficult choices. I’d love to do something like that with the heated negotiations and difficult choice of what to sacrifice in the name of your championed games. Would be a fun parlor game.
The next highlight was another visit to the classic console room, where plans to play Mario Kart Double Dash with friends were foiled by every Gamecube and Wii already being taken, so my friend went for Mortal Kombat II on the Genesis instead. I’ve never been into Mortal Kombat because of the fatalities, but none of my friends even knew how to use them, so we just had a fun time screwing around with the game. It might have been my first time holding an actual Sega Genesis controller.
To my surprise I discovered some games I hadn’t seen before on the show floor even on the final day, like a cute puzzle game called Scramble Star Crossing, that was the last thing I played with a friend before he had to leave. I also finally got around to other games I had observed but seemed too busy for me to get in. I finished the convention by having to stop playing a demo mid way through.
For Streetpass I was able to beat Slot Car Rivals. However on the ride back I had four Puzzle Swap panels left and five guests to my Mii Plaza. None of them had a puzzle piece for me. Thankfully I was strategic with my gathered pieces and only had one puzzle left, and the game lets you spend coins earned from walking to get a random panel (including ones you already have) from an incomplete puzzle, which has brought me to just one panel left.
Final Thoughts
While there were many demos I enjoyed, I felt the overall quality was a little low this year. There were quite a few demos where I couldn’t figure out what to do next, or text heavy narrative games that didn’t quite feel at home on a crowded show floor. Still plenty of games impressed me and I’ve used the wishlist feature on Steam to ensure I can keep track of many of my PAX East finds.
Also I’ve been hesitant to pull out portable game systems in situations where I easily could for fear of being interrupted, or missing my stop on the subway, defaulting to my phone because that’s easier to just put down. But trying to maximize my streetpasses made me realize a bit of proper gaming, none of that free to play grinding, is a much better way to wait. I think I’ll try to pull out my portable gaming systems more in general.
I left PAX East with a newfound appreciation for both upcoming and old games, which is as it should be.