Penny Arcade Expo (PAX '08), Day One

Day One of 2008's Penny Arcade Expo, the annual gathering for hard-core gamers, in Seattle, WA has come to an end. What's the verdict so far? It's too early to say for sure if the entire weekend will be boom or bust, but my experience so far has been far from ideal.

For starters, all the concert event attendees are determined by whomever arrives first to the Expo, opening day (today). Apparently you could start showing up at 8am, and the first few thousand arrivals got bracelets that assured them a seat in the auditorium for these shows. That's great and all, but the materials for PAX clearly state that the doors open at 2:00pm. We arrived promptly at 2pm and it looked like things had been going on all day, and one could rest assured that all those concert bracelets were gone.

Next up, rather than have registration in the lobby right when you come in, you have to deliberately make your way up to the fourth floor of the Washington State Convention Center and wade through a sea of people with varying degrees of personal hygiene just to find out that preregistering actually put us in a longer line than those with Will Call or no tickets whatsoever. On top of that, the lines for registration got mixed up with the line going into the exhibition hall, so we ended up waiting around for about 20 minutes for something I wasn't even trying to get to. I just wanted a lanyard and a goodie bag. In contrast, the last PAX I attended back in 2004 (the first of its kind) at the Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue, WA had registration and goodies right at the front door. Granted, they goofed and didn't really have a separation for preregistrants and everyone else, but honestly, I couldn't tell a difference today, this their fourth try at it.

In fact, we walked through most of the building without even getting our pre-reg badges out of our bags. We even got into the exhibition hall without them, and saw what's new and great from such companies as Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Blizzard, Razer, NCSoft, Stardock, and various game design schools. I started wondering why I even paid $50 for the three-day badge. The two times we had to show it were to get into the tabletop gaming area in the annex across the street, and to actually check out a game for the console freeplay rooms, which was a story all its own.

The exhibition hall was busy. I mean like E3 busy. Literally shoulder-to-shoulder, we had to wedge our way through a sea of bodies to get to any booths we wanted even a glimpse at. The lines at the Penny Arcade merchandise booth were no exception, and began what would be a series of lines with varying payoffs we'd experience this day. At any given time, there were probably 100 people in line to buy merch, lines that snaked back on themselves. Why so long of a wait to get an overpriced t-shirt? Because they only had about three or four people working the counter. I don't blame them for having a crapload of people showing up. It's a testament to how entertaining Penny Arcade and its comics can be. However, you really need to get more staff behind the scenes. This extended to several facets of the day, where the theme was not enough space, not enough staff, and too much going on at any given time.

Article Author: Mark Buckingham

Mark Buckingham is not only BC's Sci/Tech Editor-In-Geek, but also an avid freelance writer, gamer, techhead, reader, movie watcher, pianist, and hockey player.

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