Thinking about Pax West.

It’s an odd thing to admit, but one of the best parts of my job is going to conventions. For years, when I languished in the dredges of mid-level success, Pax West and TwitchCon gave me a reminder that I had an effect on people. These events inspired me to keep at it. While TwitchCon was a fun social event, Pax West was my chance to meet people in the industry. I met many of my heroes at Pax and ended up in a lot of press preview events I had no right to be in. There was no feeling like running into a game developer who had seen my work and thanked me for coverage. Next week, I’m going to Pax for the seventh time. I have a press badge that I never fully take advantage of, and I’ve received the usual deluge of emails that I mostly ignore. While I do book some meetings to see a small number of games, I have never genuinely taken full advantage of going to an event like Pax. In the early years, I felt that I did not have enough ability to cover games. Throughout my career, I thought, “Why take a time slot out of the developer’s busy schedule to see a game I would not cover?” Now I am such a mono creator covering a specific niche that I often don’t even bother. Yet every single year, I look forward to Pax, and it’s a highlight of the year for me.

The first time I went to Pax, it was thanks to a friend of mine who goes by Theyeggman. He let me sleep on his sofa because I could not afford a place to stay. I carpooled down with some old friends who attended annually. Tickets were hard to come by, so people would set reminders to check for the sales to start. When the tickets went up for sale, everyone had to attempt to buy as many tickets as possible so that all your friends could get in. Pax West was a cultural or even religious experience at the time. Everyone was there: Bethesda, Nintendo, Xbox, PlayStation, and you can’t forget the Indie Mega Booth. The event was four days long, and you needed that time. The halls were dense and chock-full of things to see and do. This was an era where demos were largely obsolete, so getting hands-on with a game early was often worth the wait in line.

By 2019, I had press access and could get in an hour early all three days. We had a separate entrance and had the place to ourselves. Some of the booths even had coffee (shout out to The Monolith). The press hours were magical. You could walk around in relatively empty halls, and everything was quiet(ish). It was a chance to have genuine conversations with developers who were not booked with meetings. I’ve met a lot of amazing industry folk during these hours, and I treasure a lot of the memories from those days. I even met Tarn and Zach Adams that year; I introduced myself and gave them my card. The Bay12 Twitter account followed me that day, and I was over the moon. In short, Pax has been an extremely vital part of my career, even though I have always felt I could have made more use of the access I had.

Last year, Pax was a shadow of itself. Getting tickets was easy because it didn’t sell out, except for Saturday, and it sold out the day before the event. It makes me wonder if the scalpers out front even make their money back anymore. The media badge is not as useful as it once was. There are no early press hours and no press door. There is still room for people to bring laptops to write, but last year it was empty. It used to take days to see everything, and last year I cleared every hall in an afternoon. The Indie Mega Booth is gone, and none of the major console manufacturers were there. Even the Bring Your Own Computer LAN area was a fraction of the size. However, the free play console areas were buzzing, and the tabletop zone seems to get bigger every time I see it.

Yet here I am, getting ready to pack my bag for Pax in 2024. I have a small number of meetings booked and will attend three days of the convention. I arrive Friday before noon and will attend half the day. I will be there the full Saturday and Sunday. I have my press pass, and I don’t expect any crazy access like back in the day. All four days still have passes for sale, and the only super notable mainstream exhibitor this year is the finally returning Nintendo. But there are a few things I want to see: Hooded Horse has a booth and some games that don’t have demos yet. I’m looking forward to trying Falling Frontier, a hard sci-fi strategy game with a very Expanse aesthetic. Also from Hooded Horse is MENACE, the new game from the people behind Battle Brothers. It looks brutal, and I want to try it. At a different booth, I also want to try Kriegsfront Tactics, a PS2-style procedural mech turn-based strategy game that has also piqued my interest. There is something all of these games have in common: They don’t have public demos yet. They are also games that are made by people I would love to have the chance to speak with, if possible. You never know who will be at a booth, and that is exciting.

This year, I plan to cover Pax on this blog. I will bring my laptop to the show floor and stop to write about things I have seen and played. I don’t expect it to be at the scale of its former glory, but there is still this feeling of the industry being alive that inspires me to go every year. I want to see the people working on games and talk to them about what they hope to achieve with them. Video games are an art form, and it excites me every time I get to talk with the people who make the things I look forward to playing every single day.

Here is my coverage of Pax from last year.

I’m currently in the editing trenches. To the point that I am actually a little surprised I have the time to write this. I want to get the next major video out before I leave for Pax. The Godlytombs has slowed to a low roar from its previous tidal wave of views. This means it’s time to get something in front of people for them to watch. I got 139,432 views in the last 7 days on YouTube. That is still above normal but a good chunk below last week. The Twitch channel has been suffering recently. This is actually part of the reason I decided to conclude the Goretusk streams and make the video. There is a point in every major fortress where people just stop tuning in. This has been worse than recent forts by a bit; I hope to figure out some way to remedy this. Yes, YouTube has been doing better than before, but the streams on Twitch are largely where I make my money. To be clear, I am doing fine and will be fine. Watching numbers go down always comes with an element of stress, and this is the same as it always is. I had an average of 151 viewers this week, with a 30% drop in chat activity from a month ago. I hope this changes as summer comes to an end and is not a larger trend.

It is likely I’m going to have to skip the normal Tuesday stream to finish this video project. I like the direction I’ve gone with the YouTube channel so far. The feedback has been fantastic, and the response has been extremely positive. However, I worry it’ll impact the streams negatively. We’ll have to wait and see. Summer is ending, and I often feel this way by the end of the long three-month slump that is summer. Pax is the thing that pushes me to the end and helps me keep going. That is this weekend. Let’s hope for an exciting weekend.

The stream rotation right now is Dwarf Fortress Adventure Mode and Odd Realm. I said I’d try to get the Blockades Shield, and I will do my damnedest. No matter how many adventurers have to die, I’ll do my best.