PAX: A Media Meditation

            So I kind of accidentally went to PAX East over spring break. I say “accidentally” because I had ridden down with a bunch of friends to Boston, where it was being held, and they incidentally had acquired an extra three-day pass, and I didn’t have anything to do for the Friday and Sunday we were down there. I was there for a Magic: The Gathering pro tour qualifier, but I ended up spending more time at PAX than at the tournament.

            PAX East (short for Penny Arcade Expo) is probably the East Coast’s biggest gaming convention, hosted by the guys who write the incredibly successful webcomic Penny Arcade.  They host it twice a year, once in Seattle and once in Boston, and it’s a huge deal for fans and developers alike.

            My travel plans were a little unclear for the whole weekend, so I never knew if I was going back to any particular place. As a result, I ended up carrying around a messenger bag loaded with everything I needed for the weekend, as well as a rolled up sleeping mat that I only ended up using once (god damn that thing), for the entire time. Because of that, I didn’t really get a chance to explore the expo, because I didn’t really want to haul all of that around to booths and stuff, so I just ended up sitting and playing Magic with random people that I met.

            I did get to wander the expo hall for a bit, and from what I saw, the whole convention is based on the epistemological shift from text to images. The main floor of the convention was dominated by huge banners and screens playing game trailers. This kind of presentation caters to our generation’s short attention span and desire for instant gratification. Every display was designed to immediately get the attention of passersby and hook them into whatever demo/product/whatever they were displaying.

            Another driving force of the convention is the principle of ownership. The entire con is based on the game industry, which is, obviously, an industry, based on commercialism and ownership of products. Although the developers don’t really talk about the fact that games (video games, tabletop games, etc.) are products, that’s really the bottom line.

Duke Nukem knows what's up (photo credit: Boyd Pellett)

            There are a few persuasive techniques that seemed to be rather popular among the booths that I saw. One of these in particular was what some might call “beautiful people”—the use of attractive people to attract people to booths. Unlike other cons, where “booth babes” are common, PAX generally frowns on that sort of thing. Even so, there was definitely a distinct pattern of attractive women working the booths, even though they weren’t scantily clad like the ones at other cons.

            Since I hadn’t really ever traveled on my own, the trip was a little ridiculous. Since I wasn’t with family or whatnot, I could afford to have pretty nebulous plans, so I ended up at the biggest gaming con in the East unplanned. And it was awesome. Go figure.

Game Informer

Magazine in question—Game Informer, October 2010

The triune brain in action:

First, the neocortex, informing the reader “hey, a new BioShock game!” which the reader will ideally be excited about (read the announcement here).

Second, the limbic brain, using appealing designs and a sort of sepia-toned, vintage feel (worked on me).

Some shifts:

Epistemological shift—the cover has very few words on it, and relies primarily on its image to draw the reader in. This is shown in the rest of the magazine, too, which is packed with pictures. Video games in general are also an image-driven medium. For example, the trailer for BioShock Infinite is almost completely wordless.

Some of the shifts are shown in the recently enormous video game industry, like the shift from mass media to personal/participatory. Especially because recent games allow the player to connect online, video games are an especially personal and participatory medium.

Some principles:

Production techniques—this goes back to the cover that appeals to the limbic brain—well-designed, concise, and especially appealing to a certain audience. This applies to the rest of the magazine, too—some of the articles are tilted for dramatic effect, and there’s obviously a lot of deliberation in the font choices, colors, page organization, etc.

Emotional transfer—this ties in pretty closely with production techniques, in that the way the magazine is designed plays a big part in how the reader subconsciously receives it.

Pacing—it’s not uncommon for someone to quickly flip through a magazine, and the organization of this one, what with the spacing of the ads and pictures and whatnot, makes the reader want to open it to a single page and start reading. Once inside, the actual articles are mostly paced to appeal to this generation’s inattentiveness, with lots of graphics and short paragraphs.

Persuasive techniques:

Since this medium is journalistic in nature, most of these don’t apply. The most obvious one that applies, though, is nostalgia, which refers to the cover specifically. The relatively simplistic, vintage design does a lot of work to intrigue the reader—the issue is even labeled “October, 1912.”

That's all for now. Until next time, strive to be interesting.