PAX East 2015 Reporter’s Notebook

PAX East 2015 is in the record books, and below I have a series of short observations and impressions about the latest version of Boston’s largest annual convention, in the style of the traditional journalist’s tool the Reporter’s Notebook. Many things were good, some were bad (some very, very bad) but all were interesting. Read on and find out what I experienced and discovered at PAX East 2015, then comment about what I missed!

Stupid is…
On Friday morning I discovered at 9 a.m. at the bag check table that I grabbed the wrong backpack when I left my place in Marblehead to drive to the BCEC. Lots of lighting accessories, no camera gear. D’oh! With Friday Boston commuter traffic and wait time in the morning, the return round trip lost me four hours of coverage time and a $25 valet parking fee. Lesson learned; don’t rush. Or buy a different colored backpack.

Hardest working man in…
The president of Penny Arcade (and hence all PAX conventions) is the always dapper Robert Khoo. While I was standing in the main entrance area in my “I’m a moron” stupor at realizing I had grabbed the wrong bag, I had to move out of the way of a huge clear-sided bin of lanyards being hauled out to the front of the main entrance space. Hauling the four feet high by three-foot square box was none other than Robert Khoo himself. That’s executive buy-in, right there.

Celebrity streaming
This year saw the seemingly sudden rise of the celebrity streamer. With Twitch streams becoming hugely popular, a cadre of streamer celebrities invaded PAX East 2015, to join the many YouTube celebs. Of specific note, based on the incredible thirst for a sighting expressed by my Facebook friends, was Markiplier. I admit I had no clue who these people that were constantly being stopped for selfies were — I guess I need to add streamers to the list of nerds I follow.

Odd couple
While sitting at a table in the Westin lobby bar space, having dinner and some cocktails with a slew of friends, I suddenly spotted former Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis walking past, all dressed up. Turns out, the Westin Waterfront — in addition to hosting the biggest game nerd convention in the country — was hosting the 2nd Annual Boston Police Foundation Gala, “A Salute to Boston’s Finest.” I can only imagine the conversations taking place at those tables after attendees walked past people dressed up as Tibbers or Lara Croft. I regret not seizing the opportunity to make a point about police departments not taking online threats seriously.

Teach me, senpai!
One of the best trends I noticed this year was the number of first-timer cosplayers that knocked it out of the park with complicated costumes. In all cases I encountered, the newbies had both a close friend or significant other who helped guide them through the process of crafting a costume, and lots and lots of online video tutorial help. This is a trend I am very encouraged to see, and I expect it to both broaden the base of cosplayers and step up everyone’s game.

The Riot effect
PAX East cosplay has been dominated by League of Legends characters for the past three years at least, and this year was no exception, despite the fact that League maker Riot Games chose not to have a booth on the show floor. That may have had an effect on the reduced number of cosplayers at the convention this year. It wasn’t a remarkable drop-off in numbers, but enough that at least three other people independently mentioned that same observation to me. But maybe there was another influence on that lower number.

Dressed down
There was a huge number of well known cosplayers at PAX East this year, but most of them were working a booth for one company or another, and some of them spent part of the weekend in costume while others were never cosplaying. Among the latter were Jessica Nigri, who covered the show for GameZone; Lindsay Elyse, who was working for Astro Gaming (try Guild Wars 2, Lindsay! I wasn’t kidding, you’ll love it!); and LeeleetheBunny who was working the WarGaming.net booth. Also working booths and in cosplay at times (or always) were Monika Lee at the Intel booth, Stella Chuu for Soda Pop Miniatures at the Ninja Division booth, and Meagan Marie at Crystal Dynamics for the Rise of the Tomb Raider game, among many others.

Booth … zombies?
Speaking of cosplayers working booths, the place to be was booth No. 9176, a small setup roughly two-thirds of the way to the back of the expo floor — the booth of the indie game developer Downward Viral, maker of the zombie survival card game “Z: Year One.” Why was it the place to be? Because nearly every well-known cosplayer that was at the show working was hanging out there at some point or actually working the booth. It turns out that the game designer is the boyfriend of the amazing Meagan Marie mentioned above. Working at Downward Viral were BelleChere, Amie Lynn, Eve Beauregard and the crazy talented LuckyGrimCosplay, who did the zombie clown makeup for the unrecognizable BelleChere in the cover photo, with the fantastic Mr.TUSA-Team as The Walking Dead’s Tyreese.

Enforcers? En-farce-ers more like, amirite?
First, let me make it perfectly clear that PAX volunteers — the Enforcers — are on the whole the best volunteers I have ever encountered at any convention. They firmly but politely enforce the cons rules, are the most knowledgeable about the convention and the facility of any volunteers, hands down, and should be the example every con should follow — except when they are amazingly, shockingly, not good examples.

First, on Sunday at about 1 p.m., I was sitting on the second floor all the way to the front of the building waiting on a cosplayer for a shoot, when a woman walked past me and sat on the other side of the nearby pole, facing into the corner of giant windows. Turns out, she was looking for privacy as she made a frantic and tearful phone call to her airline to try to solve a massive screw up that may have stranded her in Boston. While I was trying not to listen to this painful exchange, I suddenly heard from my left, coming from the front skywalk, somebody blaring the most annoying piece of classical music, Flight of the Bumblebee, at deafening volume. I turned to see what kind of douchebag with a boombox was doing this, and imagine my surprise when I saw it was a group of five or six Enforcers. One, in the middle of the pack, was holding her iPhone to one of the Enforcer megaphones, hence the ear-splitting volume. I jumped up and tried to pantomime over the sound that someone was on the phone and they needed to turn it off, but when I eventually caught someone’s attention I got a bemused “Sorry, can’t hear you, don’t care” shrug. Thankfully they were moving fast enough that it was over within 20-30 seconds, but it still doesn’t lessen the sheer inconsiderate nature of the behavior.

Worse was the stupid tweet that an Enforcer retweeted — a GamerGate tweet about missing the opportunity to go “in for the kill” when the Enforcer posted about Brianna Wu. In case you’ve been living under a rock, Brianna Wu, co-founder of Boston-based indie game studio Giant Spacekat, decided to pull her company’s booth from PAX because of online threats. She was still a speaker on some panels, though, and if the fact that an Enforcer retweeted such a horrible tweet about her wasn’t bad enough, it was an Enforcer assigned to the meeting room in which her panel was taking place. Yes, someone charged with making sure Wu was safe was retweeting GamerGate abuse about her.

Happy pictures!
As to not end on a down note, let me say that the first photo gallery from PAX East 2015 will be posted tomorrow, so stay tuned!