PAX East 2014 Day 3 Reporter’s Notebook

Wrapping up the series of observations about the gaming convention PAX East, happening this weekend in Boston, with the third and last day. This type of coverage has a long history in journalism as something called a “reporter’s notebook,” but what it is today is basically a series of tweets I never actually sent. But the objective is the same — to give a more immediate sense of what the convention was like.

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The crowds on Sunday were allegedly smaller than those on Friday or Saturday, and seemed that way in the first few hours. But you couldn’t tell by the lines at any spot to buy lunch, which even today were wrapping around the food court area.

People came to PAX East from the home of PAX Prime, Seattle, and from other spots on the West Coast like Los Angeles and Vancouver in Canada. Internationally, I met a lady Commander Shepard cosplayer who was from Ireland and who had the greatest mispronunciation of “Bethesda.”  But the best was a guy from New Zealand who, when he got close enough, was clearly of Maori descent, who was cosplaying Sten from Dragon Age. He chose that character because his leather armor he used for LARPing worked best for Sten. Yes, I met a Maori LARPing Dragon Age cosplayer. That had to have unlocked some life achievement.

Six years after I first got a chance to interview him, MC Frontalot is still one of the coolest, funniest interviews ever.

Three days of people walking through incredibly crowded hallways completely oblivious to where they are going because they are texting on a phone is just about one half a day too many.

Lamentation over the absence of any Nintendo presence was heard often. It could be that the schedule of Nintendo releases just doesn’t fit the timing of PAX East, but the company does have a couple of big games coming up this year — Bayonetta 2 and the game currently called Hyrule Warriors.

For each of the few big companies that might have been absent from this year’s con, there were a handful of new indie game studios on the show floor. PAX has always been a strong supporter of independent games, and the growth in popularity of mobile and social games has led to an explosion of development companies that are happy to put out quality games that can be developed in under a year with a staff that can fit in one office.

The Enforcers continue to be the best volunteer staffers at any con in the US, possibly the world. One Enforcer saw famous cosplayer BelleChere in her Lady Deadpool cosplay with a gun that didn’t have the PAX weapon check tie on it, as we were heading to a spot for a photo shoot. He was insistent that she get it checked — when we were done. I can think of some other cons where the staffer would have threatened her with expulsion for even bringing up the idea that she should wait until the shoot was done. Another Enforcer held my camera for me so I didn’t have to bring it into the men’s room.

Bottom line is that I can’t wait for PAX East 2015.