Waking up on opening day sucked for two reasons. One was because I hadn’t sat down and had a
normal person’s meal in over a day. I
had nothing but caffeine and sugar the day before, and not even that much of it
either. The other reason this morning
sucked was because the dormant cold that had been slowly creeping up on me made
its presence known bright and early. No
longer dormant, the cold decided to move in completely while I was unconscious,
setting up a headquarters in my face. It
was a pretty crappy feeling to have upon waking up, you know, minus the feeling
of my body freezing due to the lack of sufficient blankets and heating. Nevertheless, after showering and getting my
awesome Halo Combat Evolved T-shirt on I felt a lot better. The hunger still bothered me though. Thirty minutes later my Uncle and I made our
way down to the Dunkin Donuts for some breakfast. Conveniently it was located right next to the
bus stop. Inconveniently there were no
other places to grab a quick breakfast, or any breakfast period. We had already woken up later than planned so
we didn’t have time to shop around. The
doors to PAX opened at 0800 and we were ordering food from a long forgotten donut
shop that Colorado had apparently banned at the same time. I decided that three donuts would do the
trick this morning, even though I would normally only get two. I also got a Dunkachino which I have to say
didn’t compare to the great coffee the company is capable of making. The only time I can drink their coffee is
when I buy it at the store and brew it myself, and it’s amazing. So I figured the Dunkachino had to be
good. In comparison to the regular
coffee they’re known for, the crapachino tasted like someone urinated in it
after brewing it with a mixture of dirt that was sitting in pot that was used to
capture oil from someone’s car upon an oil change. Holy crap, I just realized that I again only
had caffeine and sugar, what the hell?
Our bus didn’t make its way around to grab us until
0830. I guess we weren’t really in a
huge rush this morning because our first panel didn’t start until 1030, and we
were totally focused on making every single panel that we could. We later learned that it was impossible to do
that. I was rather pissed off that it
took an hour to get to the venue. Not
only did we have to wait ages for the stupid bus to come and get us, but we
then had to travel on the ridiculously gross (I’m sure I’ve mentioned this
before) subway. We had to ride one train
to a certain stop, get on a different one, then a different one, and finally
the one that took us to where we needed to be.
If that wasn’t bad enough, our first time trying to figure this out, we
took the orange line subway in the wrong direction for about three stops before
we realized we had to turn around.
On our way back to the correct train, we made a stop to let
people on and I could hear this dude talking all loud and being all about it
before I even saw him. I was already
annoyed that someone could be talking this loud in a public place and I’m sure
whoever he was talking to was mildly annoyed as well. Moments later this bug eyed black man stepped
through the doorway and to my dismay, he was talking loudly to himself. I believe that it’s common knowledge not to
make eye contact with the crazy person speaking to themselves in public, especially
if the crazy guy is touching himself.
This guy wasn’t playing with himself, but I still forgot the unwritten
rule and was transfixed. He plopped right down in the seat across from me. Where the hell was I suppose to look then?
“HEY MAN!” That was
the moment I realized that I was staring because once he made eye contact, it
was over for me. I was stuck like a deer
in the headlights.
“Man I used to be the drummer in a band and…” the train
began to roll its way towards our final destination, slowly and
inevitably. The sound of the train got
louder but the dude didn’t raise his voice.
I was still stuck in his gaze and couldn’t seem to find a way out, so I
just sat there nodding my head like a fucking idiot as if I really understood
what he was talking about.
“And Woodstock, and Led Zeppelin, and Tower of Power, and
The Who’s” muffled again, but this time as the train picked up speed, the dude
broke out into some air drumming. I
couldn’t hear the music, but he was playing the shit out of those air
drums. The only thing that looked more
ridiculous than a crazy bug eyed black man jamming to his fake drums, was
watching an old pal of mine whacking his chest in public like it was his own
portable drum set. His crazy orange hair
made it funny though. Yes Chris, if
you’re reading this, I’m telling you that your air drumming was so stupid that
it felt like I was watching a special ed ginger with Tourette Syndrome beating
the hell out of himself. Man, I can’t
believe he called The Who, “The Who’s”, haha wow.
“I have a future and you have a future.” Was one of the final things I can remember
him saying to me as he pointed his finger towards his temple, and then at my
face. Our stop finally came and I was
relieved to get the hell out of that situation.
My Uncle brought up an interesting point shortly after we departed, what
if that guy was a regular normal dude who was bad ass at improve and was just
messing with me for shits and giggles? I
doubt it, but what a crazy thought. If
he was normal I’m sure he blogged about how dumb I looked trying to be
polite. So we finally got back on track
and made it to the venue an hour and a half after we left the stupid
apartment. I was just relieved to
actually get there. It was kind of a culture
shock for me to see thousands of gamers marching sporadically towards the
convention center.
 |
| Location of PAX East 2012 |
When we got inside we had no idea where we were going. We saw that everyone was walking around
sporting their PAX badges hanging from lanyards around their necks and we
totally wanted to look awesome like that.
My Uncle asked the information desk where we needed to go get a lanyard
and they directed us down a hall and around the corner for a half a mile and down
some escalators. The guy did literally
say half a mile and the hallway was long enough to fit the description. We followed his directions and wound up standing
in a giant line that barely moved. It
took us almost half an hour to get down to the bottom floor where we had our
badges checked as we entered this huge open area. It was completely empty, well, minus the
thousands of people who were herded into multiple lines like cattle gearing up
for slaughter. A lane would fill up with
people and then be taped off behind them so the next lane could begin filling
up. The doors to the building opened up
at 0800, so had we shown up earlier we probably wouldn’t have wound up in one
of the middle lanes. Our lane happened
to be in front of two giant projector screens which kind of made me feel like
this was the place the first panel was going down and the screens were our
benefit to see better. Although I really
had no idea what was going on or why we were even waiting in line.
 |
| The sign outside of PAX |
The way were being lined up kind of made me feel like I was
in The Hunger Games waiting to see who would be chosen as tribute. The winner gets to see the show floor
first. I was even expecting Elizabeth
Banks to pop up on the screens in front of the lines to say, “Happy Hunger
Games, and may the odds be ever in your favor, nerds.” I suppose I got bored waiting in line for so
long that my mind traversed to a dark place.
Shortly after my Hunger Games image, I couldn’t help but wonder if the
Jews were herded around the same way.
There you go folks, that’s inside the mind of Halotitan, a man who
thinks of terrible shit when he gets bored.
The floor opened up at 10, but I didn’t see the lines to my
right moving until around 1030. It
dawned on me then that we were probably headed to the expo floor with all the
booths and fun stuff to look at. I kind
of figured we had other stuff to do, but since we missed our first panel (which
was just a welcome to PAX panel) our next one didn’t begin until 12, so we made
our way through the line and up towards the showroom. As we got close we saw that the doors we had
to come through an hour before weren’t making people go to the back of the
line. They were just letting people go
to the same location I had to stand in line for. What a load of shit.
 |
| Nerd central |
Up to this point I thought that this convention was for
video games, but I didn’t realize that all those nerds I picked on in high
school for playing Magic and Pokemon during lunch were gamers as well. They even had an entire section dedicated to
their unique table top games. It really
made me feel a lot better about how nerdy I thought I was. These guys definitely have me beat on the
nerd scale, but who am I to judge. Their
passion for crazy card games is probably the same passion I have for normal
people games.
 |
| The computer area. Here we come Diablo III and Torchlight II |
Further down the way we made it to the main floor. In between the main floor and the nerd floor
was a massive area with hundreds of computers set up for tournaments and stuff. Most importantly it was where Diablo III and
Torchlight II were being shown off. The
main floor was even more impressive with how big it was as well as what was
being shown off. We saw that there were
tons of titles to check out like The Secret World, Orcs Must Die 2, Borderlands
2, Far Cry 3, Max Payne 3, Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, Assassin’s Creed 3, Spec
Ops, Xcom, and many more. It was a crazy
feeling to see all these things in real life when I’m use to watching them on G4TV
or from my Xbox. Though the expo floor
never seems that crowded on video, it was indeed a mad house in person.
 |
| Video Nerd Central |
Ha, speaking of G4, we were over behind the Xcom and
Borderlands 2 booths when I got an inch away from ramming my shoulder into some
dudes face. Yeah he was smaller than me
and about as thin as a sheet of paper, but the man spun around at the last
second and walked in the same direction we were headed. As I got a glimpse of his face it dawned on
me that the man I almost laid out was none other than Adam Sessler. Now I’m not the type of person who pees my
pants when I see a celebrity in person, especially if that “celebrity” is a
person who only gets that title for hosting a show about video games. Adam Sessler is the co-host to G4’s X-Play,
one of the only TV shows I’d be willing to suffer through commercials to
watch. It’s too bad that I don’t get to
watch it anymore though because Comcast got G4 in the divorce. Anyway, we kept walking in the same directions
because we had to get upstairs to attend our next panel when we see Sessler talking
to someone next to the Spec Ops booth. That’s
when I noticed that it was most definitely him.
I love watching the dude talk about games because he’s passionate about
them the way I am and his opinions are awesome most of the time. Watching him cracks me up too because he
talks with his hands a lot and when he’s really getting into a rant he tends to
stutter here and there. He’s like a
younger version of Joe Cocker, if Cocker was a television personality. I wanted to walk up and stutter his name as a
joke, but then I realized that it would turn me into a massive douche bag.
Our first panel was A Day In the Life of Indie Developers
(or something along that line). This was
my first convention and I was a little surprised to see how many people were
out in the hall waiting. Most of them
were waiting for the Bioware panel that was taking place right next door, but
still. We had just come from the main
floor where thousands of people where roaming around and it amazed me to see
thousands more waiting to see some panels.
It gave me a better view about how many people were in attendance. The event was sold out after all. We actually got some pretty good information
from the panel about how to get into developing and how the careers of the
panel members got started, but the whole thing became a Q and A session and I
really don’t like those. People can ask
the dumbest questions.
“Do you think your games would be better if you had a larger
penis?”
“If I start making games, will girls begin to notice me?”
 |
| Video Nerd Central Pt2 |
I left about fifteen minutes before the end because I wanted
to catch the Rooster Teeth Panel. At
least those guys are entertaining, even if they’re not trying to be. If you don’t know who they are, just go
Google Red Vs Blue and watch their videos.
They’re a machinima company that found amazing success with their
internet web show, Rev Vs Blue. The series
actually uses the game Halo to make their videos, so it’s inspiring to see the success
they’ve had from being enthusiastic fans.
I had to wait in line for a very long time just to get in, but it was
kind of worth it. They came out to talk
to the fans and introduced quite a few new things. It has actually been a very long time since
I’ve watched their shows, but some of their new stuff looked hilarious. They’ve also been branching away from using
the actual Halo games as the hub to make their videos and have started to focus
on animation. Burnie Burns, one of the actors and the
co-creators of the web series was there along with Gus, another voice
actor/creator. They too did that annoying
Q and A thing.
 |
| The Secret World/ Rooster Teeth is bottom right |
“What’s the stupidest question a fan has ever asked
you?” The little bastard asked a second
question, which I found rude because there was a massive line of people behind
him hoping to squeeze in questions of their own.
“Well you just gave us the lamest question.” Burnie didn’t
skip a beat and passed the question down the line to the other panelists.
“Why does he get to ask two questions?” What an awesome response because that’s what I
had been thinking moments earlier!
Everyone gave an “awww” reaction but Burnie told them that if you’re in
the spotlight for Rooster Teeth, it would burn like hell. I wound up leaving the show early because I
wanted to catch the next panel, but it turned out that it wasn’t something we
would have wanted to go to. PAX that
first day was hard because we wanted to try and squeeze in everything that we
really wanted to see, but we kind of realized that it would be nearly
impossible to do. I suppose I wanted to
learn a whole lot about how to get into the gaming industry and how to be
successful at it, but my Uncle informed me that PAX was more about the fans
rather than the developers. Apparently I
want to attend the Game Developers Conference (GDC) to learn and I’m not even
sure I can go since I’m technically not in the business just yet.
So as we waited for our last panel of the day, we walked
around the expo floor to decide on which events we wanted to participate in the
following days. Our Saturday schedule
only had like two panels we wanted to attend and we had planned on playing some
games. After all, what fun would it be
to attend such an event and not play some games that have yet to be released? We toured the entire floor and decided that
we wanted to check out Diablo III, Assassin’s Creed 3, Max Payne 3, Borderlands
2, and The Secret World. With that done
and out of the way, we grabbed a crappy meal from one of the places selling
food at the venue and went to our final panel, “So you want to get into the
gaming industry.” At least this food had
some protein in it, which was the first time since the trip started that I ate
a meal that didn’t consist of all sugar and caffeine.
 |
| Different view of the floor |
This panel was the most disappointing one we may have attended
the entire weekend. The panelists let us
know that our passion for games wasn’t good enough because everyone else shared
that exact same passion. Now although they
gave us a lot of information, like who the hell needs a resume when you need to
show off experience, I felt very discouraged because I looked around the room
of like five thousand people and realized that everyone wanted to do this. Does everyone want to do it because they like
playing games? How many people are
serious about making or reporting about games?
It was hard to define really, especially because the guy wearing the T-Shirt
stating that Han Solo shot first and Chewy came second, didn’t look like the type
of person that I would take seriously.
Then I looked down at my Halo T-shirt and realized that I wasn’t any
different. I’m exactly like all of these
people who want in and I learned from this panel that I have to be one of the
best. Regardless, I plan on doing this
for a living and if that means I have to bust my ass to be successful at it,
then I will. I also learned that people
asking questions really are stupid.
“How can I find out what developers are in my area?”
“Try Google.”
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| Hell, I don't even know my name |
So we decided since the expo floor closed at six and it was
pretty much that time anyway, we’d just go sit down at a restaurant to grab a
bite before heading to the apartment for some well needed shut eye. Unfortunately getting all the way over to
Cheers took awhile as well as getting from Cheers to the apartment. Oh, and we started off by going in the
opposite direction so we could meet up with my cousins and Grandpa. Can I just say that no one at Cheers knew my
name? Liars.
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