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PA's Khoo Reacts To 'E For All' 2008 Date
The last weekend in August has been the comfortable home of the Penny Arcade Expo since the event began. This year, the new 'E For All' event is planned for October, but in 2008 the IDG-run convention is scheduled for the same weekend as PAX. FiringSquad had a chat with Penny Arcade's business manager Robert Khoo, who explained why he's not worried. "If we change our dates at all, it won't be because of this- it's always a challenge to wrestle and negotiate for as much space as possible at the convention center, and since we're expecting 45-50k next year, we take what we can get. Right now we are planning for that same weekend, but if for some reason even more space opens up two weeks before, we'll take it. But I'll be honest with you- since PAX started I've seen my fair share of consumer shows come and go (take IGNLive for instance). It's super hard to run one of these things, and I'd be surprised if E For All lasts longer than this year." They're expecting a mind-boggling 45k-50k people next year.
IDG want to be sure they have an easy time of it.
Platform advocacy is like choosing a favorite severely developmentally disabled child.
Hmm... OSU's Horseshoe stadium seats over 100,000. MUSE sold out two 90,000-seat shows on one weekend at Wembley. 50,000 is awesome, and very successful, but it's not "omg my brain hurts I can't picture so many people."
Though, to put it in perspective, any info on how many people E3 2006, 2005, etc. saw show up?
I like basketball!!1!
I saw them whorin' around outside PAX. It was pretty pathetic. For the price and the content, PAX will win hands down. There is also a better feel at PAX than you get at most conventions. The security are run by people that enjoy the crowd and the content. You still get some of the Exhibitor snobbiness from some of the bigger names, companies like CDV, Naughty Dog, and Mythic(believe it or not) took the time to chat with the con-people and got excited with them for the games that came out.
The most merciful thing in the world is the inability of the human mind to correlate its contents.
Robert Khoo: It was in early June that they announced their 2008 dates, so by that time we already realized PAX 2007 was going to be insane because of the prereg ticket sales. I actually gave (IDG World Expo CEO) Mary Dolaher a ring and told her that for the past four years PAX is on the last weekend of August. She actually had no idea who we were, but I told her that it would be in everyone's best interest if she reconsidered the date given our size. She said she would call me back "next week..." and that was 4 months ago, so I don't know- maybe she lost my phone number?
How can you be running a huge gaming expo, under the banner "E for All", and not even know what PAX or Penny Arcade are? They obviously know nothing about their target audience at all.
This is the last nail in the coffin for E for All. With the success of PAX growing exponentially, and the amount of companies involved in E for All decreasing just as fast, it reeks of desperation to try and schedule E for All on the same weekend of Pax,
Or does it? E for All is already dead. It is basically going to be a local convention now. If you already live in LA, whats a little traffic congested drive for a day full of some free cool swag and games?
Perhaps by changing the weekend to the same weekend as PAX, they hope that all the hardcore gamers will be at PAX, leaving E for All to be for the less hardcore, the very very casual gamers. Expect a lot of second life and sims players from Southern California, and very little else.
I'm still debating checking out E for All this year. I'm in the area, so why not?
www.GrenadeHop.com
It's evident that E for All know full well who PA are, as they were spamming^H^H^Hguerilla-marketing^H^H^Hspamming outside PAX.
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What amazes me is that it's about the same number of people as attend Burning Man, but Burning Man gets about 1,000,000x more press.
Even if you get 50,000 geeks together for a party, it still isn't as "popular" as nudity.