PAX Prime 2014 Day 2 – My Feet are Mad, My Liver is Furious
PAX Prime 2014 is now 50% complete! PAX is just blasting by this year, but it’s been a wild ride so far for us here at Dorkadia. I didn’t spend much time on the Expo Hall floor today, though I did get to sit down with the awesome guys making Boo Bunny Plague for a great chat – keep an eye open for a more in-depth piece with our interview and game review coming later this week. Even without as many demos, today was packed with that PAX Prime specific brand of fun!
MY CABBA…oh nevermind he has a giant chaingun.
First off, an acendote behind today’s image header.
I was sitting outside when I saw the owner of the con center’s Subway and one of his employees wheeling by carts of supplies. Walking behind them were two extremely skilled cosplayers walking by. Full armor, full huge weapons, excellently made and terribly imposing. The Subway owner glanced over his shoulder, caught sight of the two cosplayers and proceeded to flip his shit. He was so enthusastic about how impressed he was with their costumes and the work that had gone into making them. Eventually he just ignore his cart of cabbages and asked for pictures with the cosplayers. His employee happily took the pictures (then had some taken of himself!) and the cosplayers were gracious and friendly. It was absolutely the most adorable thing I’ve seen at a con. Everbody knows awesome when they see it.
“You’re Doing It Wrong: Finding the RPG You’re Trying to Play”
Panelists: Sage LaTorra (Designer, Sage Kobold), Adam Koebel (Designer, Sage Kobold), Luke Crane (Designer, Burning Wheel), Shannon Riddle (Playtester)
The first thing in the morning, after a very rushed shower and a distinct lack of coffee, I ran over to this excellent panel run by some of the most entertaining people in the indie tabletop business. You ARE doing it wrong, but this funny and informative panel was really able to quantify what you should be looking for in a game, why it’s so important to find the right game and how it’s still possible to have a lot of fun with a bad game. Tabletop games are a tool, and you should be using the right tool for your job.
Also, Luke Crane is grumpy, and it’s hilarious.
After a much-needed breakfast of delicious crepes and incredibly necessary coffee, we headed upstairs to get our tabletop on. Jon picked up this really interesting game called The Quiet Year, a map-building community simulator that is simultaneously far more interesting than the genre description and way way WAY sadder. The Quiet Year is bookended by apocalyptic events – one of which the community is trying to rebuild after and one of which firmly ends the game. The quiet year itself refers to the year of gameplay in which the players simulate how the community rebuilds, responds and reacts. I’m not going to get too deeply into this game because we’ll be reviewing it sometime soon, but I will say it was fun, thought-provoking and definitely accomplished what it set out to do. Keep an eye out for a more in-depth look at The Quiet Year soon.
Downtime @ PAX Prime
If you ever find yourself with some downtime at PAX Prime and you just need a minute or forty to rest your legs (like I needed to do mid-afternoon), I have a few suggestions.
If you have 3DS and like mini-games, make sure to drop a few bucks and pick up all of the Mii Plaza Games. You will get hordes and hordes of Streetpasses at PAX and easily have the Miis to gain achievements and triumph in games that might otherwise be difficult (like the later levels in Find Mii 2 – fuck that toxic gas, fuck it right back to hell). The queue on your plaza will cap at 10 Streetpasses, so make sure to take a few minutes to “queue-flush,” as my husband and I have started to call it, whenever you have some downtime if you really like to be efficient about Mii-usage.
People watching is possibly one of the most fun activities at PAX Prime. For this, I highly recommend the halls and West Lobby of the 6th Floor. Here is the cosplay lounge, as well as the extension of the Expo Hall. You’ll see a ton of great cosplay, have a chance to take pictures in an out of the way location and score a hotdog. We had a running game of seeing what there were more of – Harley Quinns or Nesses. (The answer is Harley Quinn. By a lot.) You can also catch that guy wearing a SUPPORT PIRACY tshirt as he walks into a room filled with surly, sleep-deprived indie devs, because nobody will ever see him again.
Strike up conversations! This is especially awesome in lines where you might be stuck by yourself, or if you’re with a group of friends and see somebody hanging out on their own. This has been terribly intimidating to me in the past, but this year really hit home that when you’re at a place like PAX you have something in common with every single person there. I try to be generous with my smiles and enthusiastic in my bearing because there are thousands of potential friends, networking contacts and co-op partners at PAX Prime, and my 3DS friends list is way too short.
“Not Us, Not Here: Examining Bullying, Harassment & Misogyny”
Panelists: Stacey Weber (Psychotherapist, Face the Sea, LLP), Joshua Neal (Clinician, Sound Mental Health), Megan Spurr (Managing Editor, Dorkadia.com)
Saturday was a pretty big day for us here at Dorkadia, due to one of the names of the panelists of this panel! Our own Managing Editor, Megan Spurr, was one of the voices of a truly excellent discussion on bullying in the gaming community.
What impressed me the most were the questions asked during the Q&A section as well as comments made by the audience about common issues in the community. “How can I support marginalized gamers?” “How do I change my language to something not harmful?” “Is this a fight we can really win as long as the media and major game developers are pushing us so hard in a toxic direction?”
The fact these questions were being asked, considered, and discussed shows that yes, we can win this fight. We’re a community that thrives off of challenges and this panel made me very optimistic that we can meet and beat this challenge. Despite the heavy amounts of scary negativity in the last few weeks, we can change things for the better – for everybody that loves what we do.
