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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.
You're aware they're calling for 45-50 thousand people to show up to what is essentially a party thrown by a couple of geeky webcomic writers, right? I mean, sure, you can find 100,000 people willing to cheer for Ohio State (bless their black shriveled hearts) but that's a big money event. PAX was built by the community.
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2006 - 60,000
2005 - 70,000
2004 - 65,000
From informal google searching. So PAX is not quite E3 levels yet, but given PAX's popularity and E3's current lack thereof, they could easily swap roles in a few years.
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.
Now compare that to PAX's numbers for the same years, keeping in mind that PAX's first year was 2004.
2004 - 3,300
2005 - 9,000 (triples in size)
2006 - 19,323 (doubles in size)
2007 - 37,000 (doubles in size)
I think the growth speaks volumes.
Attention deficit disorder is a complicated issue, spanning several major... HEY LET'S GO RIDE BIKES!
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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