PAX Prime 2013

The Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) is a series of gaming conventions held in three different locations every year and one of the biggest in North America (right after E3). The biggest of the three, PAX Prime, is held in Seattle, with PAX Prime 2013 held last long weekend (Friday Aug 31 to Monday Sept 2nd). I have previously attended plenty of anime cons, but this would be my first PAX and video game convention. Got a 4-day pass from a friend but was only able to attend 3 of the days since I had work on Friday (Monday was Labour Day in the US).

Me wielding a Monster Hunter sword at PAX Prime 2013

Although not directly related to anime, I noticed a decent overlap in attendees as well as a good number of cosplayers. Spent most of my time walking around, attending some game development panels, taking pictures of cosplayers, and grabbing free “swag”. Below are some photos from the convention.
See Flickr for the complete photo set.

Day 1 (Friday)
Didn’t attend, had work to do ;< Day 2 (Saturday) Washington State Convention & Trade Center, the convention centre PAX was held at: 4-day pass: Welcome to PAX! Friends from my local anime club/mahjong club Random convention centre shots Showfloor - I didn't really know what most things were (since I don't follow the gaming industry much anymore), but I took a bunch of pictures anyway Was really tempted to buy a Canti FLCL shirt, but then I remembered that $20 is like half a cheap PVC figure, so I passed. Cosplayers wandering around, I was a bit too shy the first day to stop and ask any for pics Other side of the showroom All I could think of when I saw this was "Saber would probably approve" NVidia had this pretty cool demo where they gave out free T-shirts that could be used for green-screening. If you saw "You win" in your shirt, you get a prize. Bought a DOOM Cacodemon plush cause it looked cute and friendly ^_^ Holy crap was the PC free-play area huge... Try out Final Fantasy XIV: ARR and you get a free (oversized) loot bag and a poster. I've already played the closed beta (and found it boring) but the oversized loot bag was pretty nifty. My friend was slowly armouring himself up with free loot bags. Soon, he'll be like the Cardboard Box Gundam There was an entire section of the building dedicated to Magic The Gathering The legendary artist, rk post[/url] was also there, but I didn't have anything for him to sign and I already have way too many anime posters needing to be put up to buy more posters ; / More showfloor area, somewhere. I tend to get lost easily so I just followed my friends around since they seemed to know where they were going. Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA F had a booth, complete with two official cosplayers and some PS3s hooked up for playing. If you played, you got a foam head-bonking stick that lights up. But he will out-bonk you XBOX One and PS4 section We called him Bromura There was a huge lineup to get into the League of Legends room - I don't play LoL so I didn't even bother Instead, killed some time in the console gaming room Wandered around taking pics Lunch time, omnomnom Sat in on a panel about open source and Minecraft. Was somewhat interesting (as a developer, not as a Minecraft player) Some random cosplays Me posing with a giant Monster Hunter sword Back on the showfloor Some statues ThinkGeek booth, bought a Turret plush for only $20 Participated in some videogame trivia. My team won the first round, then failed miserably the next 7 rounds orz Some Zelda statue I assume. Decided to drop by the night concert to check it out. Instantly regretted it. A bunch of guys rapping really loudly on stage. Day 3 (Sunday) Start your day with some nice cosplay!

I stopped by the Wacom booth to play around with their tablets, and decided to make a random quick sketch to try it out. Drew Sona from League of Legends since I thought she looked like Miku (don't play LoL though so no idea how accurate/inaccurate it is). I think I prefer my Surface Pro's touchscreen much more The demo artists was clearly much better than me and more used to using a Wacom Went around taking more photos of cosplayers. The Final Fantasy panel was meh and more-or-less a circle-jerk Attended a Kickstarter panel. It took me a while to realize that "Asymmetic" was referring to the same Asymmetic that made Kingdom of Loathing, and that it was HotStuff on the far right. Pretty cool. Persona 4 Arena tournament. I recorded the entire final match. Was pretty amazing to watch two pro players fight: Spark (Teddie) vs Vista (Chie) After the tournament, we all went for some greasy omnoms Dem retro cabinets A panel on hacking, exploits, trolling (well, kinda). I was expecting a more interesting, technical talk, but it turned out to be a rant about customer service experiences. Which was entertaining, but not really interesting to me as a programmer ; / He asked me if I recognized who he was cosplaying. I said hell yes. Day 4 (Monday) Didn't do much on Day 4 since everyone was tired. My friends stayed mainly in the console gaming room, so I wandered around. Just in time to see the LoL cosplayers start lining up. Went into the LoL room (almost no lineup this time) to check out what was going on. They were throwing around free stuff and doing trivia. After a while, the trivia event ended and on-stage went the cosplayers. Most of them were pretty impressive, but I was a bit too far back to see clearly. There were many, so here is just a small sample (see the full Flickr set for all of them). There was plenty of violence and spontaneous dancing Went outside for some Daleks and Gundams Awesome Portal cosplay, complete with gun A panel on marketing for indie game developers. Was kinda interesting and useful. The final main event for PAX Prime was the Omegathon finals. The game chosen was the still-work-in-progress SpyParty, which neither participants had played before. It took a few rounds, but one of the participants figured things out and went to win 5-3. Took a full video of the entire match for those interested Loot Just some free stuff I picked up. Bought the Portal 2 Turret plush and the Cacodemon, but the other stuff were all freebies. I ended up picking up a bunch of lootbags from my friends and others since a number of my guildies wanted me to grab LoL skin codes for them (all out now). There was plenty of more free stuff to get from the company booths, but I didn't want to walk home with 42 different T-shirts that I probably wouldn't end up wearing. Hope you enjoyed the photos. For all photos, see the Flickr set: http://www.flickr.com/photos/keripo/sets/72157635353447615/ ~Keripo Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/keripo/sets/72157635353447615/ MyFigureCollection: http://myfigurecollection.net/blog/9921