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.