thwackers

I’m going to take a break from the usual journal to talk a bit about PAX 2009 since it just happened.  Geoff and I made the trek across the border for 3 nerdy days to the Washington Convention Center with 70, 000 other gamers.  With our matching “Thwackers” shirts and boxes of business cards we hit the floor to promote the show.  PAX was huge, fun, and I’d say successful.  Here’s what happened…

First of all the trip almost ended before it started.  I woke up at 6am, showered and came downstairs to find an email from Geoff letting me know that he just realized his passport had expired.  But we were all ready so damnit we were going to try it anyway.  Besides, he had his birth certificate and driver’s license and we don’t look suspicious.  There were no waits at the border, which makes one think they’d spend all the time in the world checking each car.  Nope.  Turns out it’s easy to get into the states on an expired passport only.  Who knew.  You know what else?  It’s just as easy to get back into Canada.  No one asked for more ID.  Maybe having genuine excitement telling the guard that we’re going to a gaming expo automatically dismisses us as a threat.  Anyway, getting to Seattle was a piece of cake.

Those of you who’ve been to PAX know that the first day, or at least first half of the day is a little overwhelming – the sheer number of nerds, the thousands of swags bags bumping into you and the costumes!  So many Team Fortress costumes.  And those "Where’s Waldo" guys were back.  Better question – Why Waldo?  I don’t get the correlation between games and Waldo.  Anyone?  Anyway, you get used to it all pretty fast.  They seemed to have a much better setup than last year and even though there were about 10,000 more people, it didn’t feel as jammed.

The first thing you notice about PAX 2009 is immediate – Felicia Day isn’t there.  I don’t think I’m alone when I say it would have been cool to see Felicia Day again however her absence created some interesting situations for us.  Most noticeably, there wasn’t ever much of a line at The Guild/Legend of Neil booth.

I’m pretty sure it looked like we were stalking Sandeep Parikh and Tony Janning, the director and star (respectively) of “Legend of Neil”.  We visited their booth not once, not twice, but three times!  Once a day!  Not to mention the “Making of a Hit Web Series” panel and “Legend of Neil” screening.  Although we had valid reasons for going to the booth so much, the first was simply to say hi because we like the show and we wanted to talk to them about our show.  The second was so Geoff could buy a shirt.  And the third was so Geoff could talk to Kim Evey, co-producer of “The Guild” because we hadn’t seen her yet and he wanted to talk about “Thwackers”, but since they shared a booth - there we were again!  But the guys we really nice and seemed genuinely interested in the show.  I hope they check it out and like it.

We checked out some cool panels.  The creators of “Hey Ash, Watcha Playing” were there to talk about their success.  I hadn’t really seen much of their stuff before but they certainly have a unique voice.  We also checked out interesting panels by “The Totally Rad Show” and “CO-OP’ which were good.  My favorite was the “Making A Hit Web Weries” with Sandeep Parikh, Tony Janning, Kim Evey and Jeff Lewis (Vork from “The Guild”).  They had a lot of great ideas to share and showed some of their older stuff which was really funny.  Search youtube for the short “Raptor” – pretty damn funny.

The first night we went to a fan meetup for “The Totally Rad Show” and “CO-OP”.  We met some cool guys at our table (hello Joel, John-Mark and Steve!) and drank with Alex and Dan from TRS.  They were pretty hammered.  Alex was talking about making his own web series and how he made all 10 episodes because he didn’t want to do just 3 because if nothing happens then you’re stuck with 3 whereas with 10 you can at least release a DVD.  That got the whole table laughing because we’d been talking about our 3 episodes of “Thwackers” before that.  He has a point, but then again it’s cheaper to make 3 and if no one watches them, then who’s going to buy a DVD?  Right Alex?

Saturday night we found ourselves at a private party thrown by CCP.  I’m not going to get into details but if you were there you know how crazy it was.  Nerds + open bar + vampire party = the weirdest party I’ve even been to.  Some really drunk guy who almost fell over during our conversation was trying to convince me that I should be selling my game in Europe.  I kept trying to tell him that I wasn’t selling a game but he was too drunk to understand anything.  I really have to idea what he was talking about - “What business do you have in America!”  Awesome, thanks for the chat.  Later on that night, over dollar pizza Geoff bet me $45 that Justin Timberlake is married.  I have no idea how this came up, or how we even decided on $45 dollars but of course I won because EVERYONE knows that JT isn’t married.

However the greatest part of the weekend was meeting a fantastic young woman named Jamie Dillion.  She approached me after the “Making Of A Hit Web Series” panel and wants to be involved in helping promote “Thwackers”.  That’s about as detailed as I’m going to get as we figure everything out but Geoff and I are really excited to have her on board.  She’s a gamer, she knows her stuff, and I think she’s going to make a great addition to the “Thwackers” team.

And that was pretty much my experience at PAX.  I guess I didn’t really play any games and I certainly don’t have any general gaming “news” but that’s not really why I was there.  I just met some cool people (hey guys from Kentucky, ghostbusters and all the other folks I talked to in line) and just enjoyed another year at PAX.  It was fun and I look forward to next year!