PAX East 2011, Manifesto

This weekend I had the pleasure to attend the giant 3-day gamer party known as PAX East. Thrown by Penny Arcade creators Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins, PAX (both Prime and East) has become nationally renowned as the little con that could and has grown into an ersatz nerd Mecca. Twice a year thousands of us flock to each coast to talk about games and more importantly play them in a social setting. PAX is not just a show for game companies to show off their new product, it's a haven for geeks. We don't all get to talk about games every day like those of us on podcasts or residents of more populated areas. Some gamers are holed up in their room playing Dragon Quest IX for 40 hours without getting to experience tag mode and only get to share multiplayer experiences over Xbox Live or Steam. Even more popular players never get the full gamer experience, I know lots of people who don't play games and it's a bummer.

Entering the front door of PAX for someone like me, who loves video games and really only gets to play them alone and discuss them on podcasts, is indescribable. The only way to put it into words would be to call it a religious experience. I've never walked into a room so enormous and known without a doubt that everyone in it (this year's PAX East hit 69,500 attendees) loves games just as much as I do, if not more. I got to experience amazing things like watching 1Up's Frank Cifaldi buy a $200 copy of Snatcher, crash G4's panel with Keith Apicary and 60 other people, and joining a hundred other fans of the aforementioned 1Up to get piss drunk and chat about games at a local bar. The shyest people in the country (myself included) sparked up conversations randomly with complete strangers. I even got to meet some of my heroes like Shane Bettenhausen, Nathan Barnatt and retro gaming guru Jeremy Parish, who gave me a wrist band to get into said 1Up party and secured me free alcohol for the night.

PAX is truly an experience to behold and I have a few more blog posts about it, but specifically I wanted to mention how it sparked the creation of this blog. I was able to attend a few panels over the course of the weekend, including two that I found very educational. They were on the subject of Community Management for game companies/news sites. This is a job I've always been enchanted by and have discussed with many community managers like SEGA's Aaron Webber and Kellie Parker. Both panels featured community managers from major companies like Naughty Dog, Insomniac and Harmonix and I found both to be very eye opening. I learned a lot during these talks, but a few specific things caught my ear; start a blog (boom), get some stage experience and take improv classes (come see me perform at the Philadelphia Improv Theater and let me know how I do), and love video games.

I've written for a few websites over the last couple years, both about and not about games, but I've never maintained a personal blog of my own. I've never really spent time writing something for me and no one else, something that I wrote because I just felt like it. I may do some reviews and post more conventional things like news, but this blog will be very stream of conciousness. There will be multiple posts about a single game if it takes a while to finish or I just have too much to say about it for one post. Sometimes I may not even talk about games, I'm a nerd who wears many hats. Some of them are pointy with stars on them that I wear around a table on which stands tiny figures of dragons and some of my hats have big round mouse ears. And sometimes I wear a giant foam cowboy hat that I sharpie'd "PRESS" on.

So don't expect this blog to be an excuse to tool around and broadcast it to the internet, but it's not strictly for my portfolio either. I'd really like to do at least one post a day, so we'll see how that goes. If you think I know what I'm talking about and have interesting things to say (mostly about games) check it out, but beware this blog is for the open minded gamer. Sure, I pick up a AAA title once in a while, but I spend way more money at the $3 bin than I do at the new release wall. I favor the obscure over the obvious.

 See you space cowboy...