PAX Day one

I flew down on the Thursday the flight was packed and probably had more than its fair share of PAX goers.
Got into Seattle late and took the light rail into town which worked quite well. The hotel was nice pretty fancy I had some food and crashed.
Didn’t sleep too well something I ate didn’t agree with me. Got up early and toddled down to Benayora hall and joined the queue for the keynote.
After an hour or two I got in the hall is pretty large so there were a load of people in there but the visibility was good.

Warren Sector famed for thief and deus ex now working on epic mickey for Disney was the speaker. He gave an entertaining talk on his own background and where he saw the future of gaming. He saw threats in the current move to strip gaming of first amendment protection (freedom of speech) he also saw internal issues in that to survive gaming had to become mainstream or it would die out and there is resistance to that both from within and without.
It was an interesting and thought provoking talk. We went from that straight in to the q&a which was very fun. They announced a new spinoff comic with Scott kurtz about game testers. And their new hire from their tv show got engaged. I’ve always wondered if that’s such a good idea asking someone to marry you front of a massive audience it could be very painful if he person says no.
After the q&a I walked to the main convention center and wandered the floor like a zombie unsure where to start. The first person I saw was Will Wheaton signing things which seems right on some levels. I joined a queue to play the dead space 2 demo it took an hour and made me miss one of the things I had picked out but it was a fun demo basically dead space with a few new tweaks. I wandered some more then went for lunch.

Even though it had gone 3 everywhere was still packed so I had to walk a ways before I found somewhere not stacked to the gunnels with geeks. After eating I was a bit tired so headed back to the hotel. Ended up dozing off for a hour or so but woke in time to join the queue for the concerts.
I was looking forward to he concerts as I’d researched the groups and was really looking forward to the Protomen a rock group that theme their songs off some dystopian take on mega man universe.

They were awesome good music and a nice dramatic show.

Next up were Anamanaguchi who are a rock band with some intends and what looked like psones to add a “vocal” track they were also awesome. I felt bad for their spokes guy as they had some technical issues and he was freaking out a bit party due to the size of the crowd. The sounded great though. After them was Metriod metal who did some good songs I’ve only played a few Metriod games so theres less of the nostalgia others maybe had but they still played well. They had this huge inflateable Metriod which the audience batted around then burst. I was feeling pretty tired by then it was 12am but I figured I might as well hear the last guys before I left.

The hall had gone from packed to maybe half full by this point. The last guys were the mini bosses who did covers of old video game tunes. They were good and I ended up staying to the end but I was really out of it having weird pseudo dreams. I headed back for a sleep to prepare for PAX day 2.