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"E For All" Game Expo Withers, PAX Thrives
After the continued struggles of E3 this year, it looks like another IDG-based games conference will have its own troubles. BigDownload reports that most major game manufacturers are skipping E For All, in part due to their focus on the upcoming Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) and BlizzCon (which will be televised). E for All will have major presentations by Microsoft and EA, but you'll have to go to PAX to see events and exhibits from other big publishers; for example, the playable Jumpgate Evolution demo, the Guild Wars tournament, or the Omegathon. The Seattle Times ran a story about Penny Arcade's creators and how PAX came into existence. Further competition for E For All is coming from the Tokyo Game Show, which runs in the beginning of October.
I can say that it is good that a convention where the focus on gaming is valued more than the focus on the "market for gaming".
Hell... Penny Arcade was pushing the latest edition of Dungeons and Dragons table game not too long ago. I would guess that this is a fairly small market, but they don't care because they enjoy the game.
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Wow!
I miss that game!
Man o man -- I'll be buying that on release day. I just hope it is half as good as the original jumpgate was when the servers had good traffic.
It wasn't nearly as much fun to turn the universe red when there weren't enough folks on to notice :(
Did they ever fix the 'nix hitbox? will be my very first question when I get my hands on this, the next will be 'Where am I going to find a decent joystick in 2009?!?!?! do they still make them?' followed by 'can we still replace the in game music with our own? and rewrite the HUDs?'
The original was awesome - its too bad 3DO screwed it up. Glad to see it back for with a sequel
Wow!
Did anyone else notice that many of the sound effects in Jumpgate appear to have been ripped from the first season of Babylon 5.
And a lot of games use the "pneumatic door open/close" sound effects from id Software's Doom.
I wonder if they ever got in trouble for that.
Probably not. I'd start by assuming good faith and guess that Jumpgate and B5 just happened to license the same stock sound effects library.
I still love how PAX's would-be competitors just don't get it, like there's some kind of Feng Shui about their display rooms that draws fans, instead of not being treated like a walking wallet with a desperate libido.
It's not PAX's fault that E for All is failing.
Just think of just the name "E for All"...it sounds so.....cheesy (for lack of a better term).
(plus there's that dreaded drug reference in the name....not so good for the public image).
anyways...the last good "E"-anything conference (formerly "E3") was the one in 2005 before they started instituting just stupid rules for a conference; they banned booth babes.
Then in 2006, attendance numbers were less than previous years and they announced that the 2007 E3 would be "downsized". (nail in coffin)
They tried to salvage it by spinning off the "non-invite only" conference as "E for All" but the damage was done. By then PAX was gaining lots of steam....plus the price was right. It had a bigger attendance numbers and wider range for its attendance demographics.
It's the PAX!
Stupid Alliance.
E3 died when it became a conference instead of an Expo
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How is the Omegathon an "event (or) exhibit from (a) major publisher"?
Or should that have been parsed as ((events) and (exhibits from major publishers)) rather than ((events and exhibits) from major publishers)? If so that doesn't make sense... I mean, you don't think E for All is gonna have "events"?
Maybe there should be a bit of Javascript in Slashcode - when you hover over a sentence in the summary it'll pop up a sentence diagram...
Bow-ties are cool.
That'll bring the kids in, right? Right?
I did have to laugh that PAX promised that fatal1ty wouldn't be there -- I think it's clear which convention understands their market.
Fuck you. Let us have PAX.
Have you even been to PAX? Ever met Jerry and Mike (Tycho and Gabe)? There's going to be an East Coast PAX because metric ftons of people begged on their knees for it. It will have all the same features for what I would wager will be the same cost. How is that profiteering? Sources on the inside of PA Inc. have said that at their current, dirt-cheap ticket price they only about break even. I don't see how doing the same thing in another place that other people have requested is somehow magically sleazy. There's no sound ethical rationale for that.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
There's going to be an East Coast PAX because metric ftons of people begged on their knees for it.
And there you have it. They're doing PAX currently because its fun. They'd be doing PAX east because there is demand for it.
The best you can hope for it PAX east to be a shadow of the real PAX and the real PAX will be completely unaffected.
That's highly unlikely, what's much more likely is that the real PAX will suffer while PAX east will simply have none of the things that make PAX what it is: no concerts, no developers, no point.
There are already plenty of conventions on the east coast, but there's a reason all the big conventions (ComicCon, PAX, BlizzCon) are on the west coast. Hell, even "E For All" is on the west coast.
PAX east is doomed to fail, and the best we can hope is that it doesn't take PAX with it.
Why don't we just try it out once, and see if it's something that would be good to do again.
You know, kinda like they did with the first PAX?
Because there already are east coast conventions?
There are two other east coast game conventions mentioned in this thread. There's no need to stretch the PAX organizers (and I don't just mean Gabe and Tycho) thin just to get Penny Arcade in the name.
I think you're afraid that PAX East will kick the ass of everything over there right now. Might your name be Ed Fleming?
No concerts and no developers? What are you smoking? What sound, rational basis do you have for believing that PA Inc. would abandon all the things that have made the PAX model a success in the first place? Robert Khoo has already said the developers are not only on board, they were a force in bringing this about. Perhaps you forget about the East Coast game companies like Firaxis?
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Forgot? More like "never heard of." Which kind of proves the point, doesn't it?
Proves the point that you're just trolling, perhaps. Firaxis is home to Sid Meier, creator of the Civilization series. If you have no idea what that series is (even if you don't necessarily like it)...yeah, PAX is not for you anyway...
Yeah, good thing GenCon is on the west coast!
*blink*
When the hell did Indiana become west coast?
I keep trying to pick fights, but I can't shake this Excellent karma.
That was obviously a sarcastic reply to the parent.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
While not as large as ComicCon, it is one of the largest multi-genre conventions in the US. Last years attendance was 40,000+ and it keeps growing.
Plus, unlike a lot of conventions, DragonCon counts their multi-day passes as ONE person and not 2 or 3 or more (for example, if I buy a 4 day pass for DragonCon that counts as 1 person at the convention but some conventions would count that as 4 people and thus inflate their overall numbers).
There are many other conventions on the East Coast that do very well. Why don't you check out DragonCon though? If you live on the East Coast come on down to Atlanta for 4 days of fun, freaks, fans, and foolishness (did I mention hot young women in little or nothing?)!!
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What it proves is that you're not qualified to judge any part of this situation. Firaxis was valued at $26 million when it was sold to Take Two, and as a company has sold over 8 million games in its Civilization series alone. Some others you're forgetting are Bethesda of Elder Scrolls and Fallout 3, Big Huge of Rise of Nations, Epic of the Unreal series, Take Two/2K Boston of Bioshock, etc.
I really don't know what kind of crazy you are to be this antagonistic about something this awesome. I really think I got it right the first time, that you're some loyalist to some local event, and you're afraid that PAX is going to rock the socks off of everybody over there so hard that whatever event you like is going to wither or be forced to change, just like E4A and DragonFlight.
I've been attending PAX since it began in 2004. It is the best show of its kind on earth, that's why it's been growing by double every year with almost 0 budgeted for advertising. I plan my entire year around it and would have to be hospitalized or dead to miss it. The East Coast will come to welcome and love its new game expo overlords.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Robert Khoo has already said the developers are not only on board, they were a force in bringing this about.
I'd hate to agree with an obvious troll, but if they're only doing PAX East because people and vendors are forcing them to, that pretty much guarantees it will suck. PAX is supposed to be about fun, not meeting market demand.
PAX East Coast will open in Boston in 2010. I'm hoping it'll live up to its west coast brethren, as I probably drove half way to Boston to catch a flight to go out west.
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Boston?! Are they fucking nuts?!
Boston is the city that thought little light-brite images of characters intended to look like Atari characters were bombs.
That's a GREAT place to try and hold a video game convention. I wonder how long it will take the bomb squad to invade the convention under the assumption that all those things with LED lights must be bombs.