PAX Prime: An Extra Day In 2013, and Plans For Australia

PAX Prime, probably by far the largest ongoing event spawned by a web comic, is in progress right now in Seattle, with an attendance of 70,000 gamers (and a smaller number of dancing stormtroopers). Two big announcements about future PAX events were announced on Saturday. The first is that next year's event will be a four-day gathering rather than the thus-far usual three; the second is that, some time next year, PAX will make its first international foray, with an event in Australia — exact time and place to be determined.

Comments

Am I getting old?

[blackpaw]

Never heard of it

Re:Am I getting old?

[_KiTA_]

Never heard of it

We're all getting old.

Penny Arcade is a gamer webcomic, I believe the first gamer webcomic -- if not the first, then definitely the most successful.

E3 was an expo for Electronic Entertainment (games), but a few years back they decided to throw out the dirty hippies (gamers), which understandably pissed a large number of people off. On the other hand, it was completely out of control and the focus (a press event) was lost.

So, deciding that was quite absurd, the Penny Arcade guys decided to have their own Expo, and the timing was just right that all the people not allowed to go to E3, went to PAX. And it kind of exploded from there. PAX is now "the" place to get hype about your upcoming game / console / etc set up, especially among the actual consumers.

It's also a great place to trade Pokemon and Dragon Quest 9 maps.

Re:Am I getting old?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's popular among the penny arcade crowd. Also microsoft. Yeah I haven't thought about them in years either.

Used to be PA references all over the fuckin place here though. Now the only thing anybody seems to reference is xkcd (not bashing it, just kinda sad that the diversity has dwindled.)

Honestly, what's making me feel old is that I can remember when videogames didn't suck and were done on a shoestring budget, and 5-10 years down the road your favorite company was still discernable as the company you enjoyed 5 years before (rather than simply an arm of so and so publisher, to be laid off and remade on a whim.)

Re:Am I getting old?

[Anonymous Coward]

Think 70,000 gamers all in the same place at the same time. Only 1/3rd of which know what deodorant is.

Re:Am I getting old?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you aren't into gaming, then you might not care.

It's been happening for 9 years now, 3 years having two events(west/east coast), and has been larger than E3 since 2006.

Re:Am I getting old?

[Elwood P Dowd]

PvP launched 5 months before Penny Arcade according to Wikipedia. It might not make any sense now, but when Penny Arcade launched, they appeared to consider themselves the fresh young upstarts and PvP the entrenched old-guard of videogame web comics.

Re:Am I getting old?

[Impeesa]

There was a perma-link to it on the front page of Slashdot for years, I believe.

Re:Am I getting old?

[Impeesa]

Penny Arcade the comic, that is, not the conventions they do. If you've heard of the former but not the latter somehow, then my apologies.

Re:Am I getting old?

[Anonymous Coward]

E3 was never a public event. It was an industry and, to a lesser extent, media event, and they required identification to get your badge. They got lax on verification and gave out thousands of free passes every year and in the dotcom boom years there was a surge of non-industry people at the event, and after a few years of that they got tired of the enormous crowds and such and got strict.

Realistically, PAX is just what the non-industry people wanted E3 to be. As someone who was in the industry and attended many E3s, yea, it's nice to have all those people there, but the keynotes and meetings were the most important part for most people, as well as giving the press opportunities to demo and discuss your games. PAX filled a niche that really wasn't filled before.

Re:Am I getting old?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what Gabe has to say about the incident, the emphasis "IMPORTANT PART" label, was added by me. http://www.penny-arcade.com/2011/1/28/

It’s true that we have decided to remove the Dickwolves shirt from the store. Some people are happy about this but a lot more of you are upset. You think we’ve caved into to pressure from a vocal minority and you’re not entirely wrong. let me at least break down why we did it though.

First of all I would never remove the strip or even apologize for the joke. It’s funny and the fact that some people don’t get it, or are offended by it doesn’t change that. People complained about the strip and that’s fine with me, my response as always is “if you don’t like it don’t read it.” It is very easy not to log on to Penny Arcade and read our bullshit. We’ve always made offensive comics and that’s not going to change anytime soon. If jokes about violence,rape,aids,pedophilia,bestiality,drugs,cancer,homosexuality, and religion bother you then I recommend reading a different webcomic.

IMPORTANT PART
PAX is a different matter though. We want PAX to be a place were everyone feels welcome and we’ve worked really hard to make that happen. From not allowing booth babes to making sure we have panels that represent all our attendees. When I heard from a few people that the shirt would make them uncomfortable at PAX, that gave me pause. Now whether I think that’s a fair or warranted reaction doesn’t really matter. These were not rants on blogs but personal mails to me from people being very reasonable. It’s how they feel and according to them at least, removing the shirt would make them feel better about attending the show. For me that’s an easy fix to the problem. I really don’t want to have this fight and if not having it is as simple as not selling a shirt then I’ll do it. Contrary to what they might think I’m not a complete asshole.

Now for some people removing the shirt isn’t enough. They don’t want to come to PAX or support PA because of the strip or because they think Tycho and I are perpetuating some kind of rape culture and that’s a different matter. First off it assumes a lot about us that simply isn’t true but more importantly it’s not something I can fix. I’ve gotten a couple messages from people saying they are “conflicted” about coming to PAX. My response to them is: don’t come. Just don’t do it. In fact give me your name and I’ll refund your money if you already bought a ticket. I’ll even put you on a list so that if, in a moment of weakness you try to by a ticket we can cancel the order.

So there you go. It’s not a simple decision. No matter what we do we’ll have people mad at us. If you want to talk more about it we can chat at PAX.

-Gabe out

Re:Am I getting old?

[Anonymous Coward]

How does anyone justify going to a Penny Arcade convention? Why hasn't everyone joined the boycott? What kind of people go there? For the three people in the world who don't know, instead of apologizing to fans offended by their rape joke, Penny Arcade creators Mike Krahulik (left) and Jerry Holkins mocked the outrage with a Dickwolves T-shirt. The Dickwolves incident has transformed Penny Arcade from a welcoming, inclusive public commons to a place with a constituency â" however small â" that is hostile to outsiders. Such a con should, theoretically, endeavor to include rape survivors, as well as other marginalized groups, from non-white gamers to disabled gamers to genderqueer gamers.

Boycott? Yeah, uh, no, not going to boycott a funny webcomic because a bunch of prats got upset. I believe the proper vernacular is "Deal with it, nerd."

Pretty successful boycott, too, since It's apparently been going on for a year and this is the first I've ever heard of it.

Seriously, the second the words "rape culture" come out one has to physically restrain the eyes to prevent harming oneself from rolling them too far, too fast. What an asinine, retarded phrase.

Other things that completely destroy your credibility: "Porno Culture" and "American Patriarchy," or calling it "fE-Mail" or intentionally misspelling "Women" (as "Womyn" or what have you).

Re:Am I getting old?

[Yvanhoe]

Huh ? Following Penny Arcade regularly, I didn't know about this controversy. Apparently some people have been offended by that joke :
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/8/11/

I... just don't understand how this kind of outrage works. How can someone construe the comic as saying that rape is fun or something to mock? They point out that most med-fan video games give us a disney-land version of a medieval universe where there is a lot of unacceptable things happening : slavery, murder, torture, violent monsters, snatched children, eternal damnation, violent battles, lost limbs and, yes rape. I just don't get it : the guy is a slave, chained, whipped all day long, can be killed when his master wants, can be tortured for fun, and the thing people focus on is... rape?

So yes, if you understood this as an endorsement of rape you clearly missed the point totally and it is fair to make fun of you in a non-offensive and totally tongue-in-cheek way.

Re:Am I getting old?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you very much for bringing that incident to my attention.

I never liked them to begin with, but after reading how they handled that, I now have great admiration for them.

Get your panties out of a knot.

Re:Am I getting old?

[bigstrat2003]

You mean that manufactured controversy where a bunch of oversensitive idiots got worked up about something that was in no way offensive? Yeah man, let's all boycott PA because of that.

PA had exactly the right response to those idiots who complained about the comic with the dickwolves: made fun of them for being so ridiculous as to read into the thing some kind of endorsement of rape. If you're that stupid, you deserve to be made fun of by every person around who's not a halfwit.

Re:Am I getting old?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not really the comic that bothers people, it is the response by Gabe to it afterward. It's a really tricky issue to see unless you've had it touch your life, and forever after you can't help but be affected.

The problem is not jokes, or being insensitive. The problem is that rape in the US (and in all probability around the world but I can't speak to it) is not taken nearly as seriously as it should be for something so awful. If you ask someone if they think rape is bad they'll say "of course!" and look at you funny, but the reality is that most rape victims are not treated like victims. There is this horrible grey nebulousness about it where huge swathes of the people that agree rape is bad will also say "well you probably did something to deserve that, you should just be more careful next time". It's a bizarre and twisted system that actually protects rapists and demeans victims of the crime. What the fuck.

More than half of rapes will not be reported. The culture is such that they think maybe they are at fault or maybe it just wasn't that big a deal. They should suck it up and get over it already and maybe it will go away. I have a friend that felt this way for a year after her rape, before finally being so haunted by the event she went to the police. Reliving it again for the detectives and the DA, doing a pretext call where the man admitted on tape that he felt it was rape. And the DA decided not to follow through on the case because my friend knew the person who raped her, and the DA felt she could not build a strong enough case to convict and dropped the whole thing.

If you would like more rape statistics please see: http://www.rainn.org/statistics

So to bring things back around, the rape joke in the comic doesn't matter. It's a kinda funny joke about a game, and has nothing to do with the people I know that have been raped. What DOES matter, and what bothers a lot of people, is that after it was brought to their attention Gabe and Tycho did not acknowledge that the topic is sensitive to some people, but instead doubled down and said "It's just a joke, get over it already". That is the attitude that makes rape SO hard for victims. It minimizes the topic and takes something incredibly serious and scarring and makes it "not a big deal". Something you should just shut up and get over. And it's a problem.

I hope I can convey how seriously rape can haunt someone. And maybe you can see just a glimpse of why it is such a nightmare for people to go through this traumatic event and then have the entire system, which agrees this is a terrible thing, fighting against you every step of the way if you want to report it. I would like for more people to be able to understand without having to know someone that has gone through it, because it is heartbreaking.

Re:Am I getting old?

[DNS-and-BIND]

The whole thing made a huge splash in the feminist blogosphere when it happened. Didn't you get the memo?

[Trigger warning for rape used in a "humorous" capacity.] The problem is, I just don't find rape funny. Because rape survivors exist among us, and after being victimized by rapists, they are revictimized by a society that treats even real rape like a joke, forced to live in a culture that actually has a lot of rape jokes, including those about rape victims being actively denied justice for no other reason than because people don't take rape seriously. I don't find rape funny because rape victims are often doubted, mocked, and insulted openly.

[Trigger warning for discussion of sexual assault in games and comedy and sexual slavery] Mere sexist jokes have been documented to âoefavour the mental mechanisms which urge to violence and battering against womenâ, in other words, make people more accepting of such behaviour. The release of endorphins gets linked to the sexist ideal, and suddenly it seems a good idea.

If the good people are on one side of the argument, and you're on the other side, isn't that a clue that YOU'RE WRONG? The appropriate response is a self-criticism, an essay on exactly what you did wrong and how you'll never do it again, plus paying a fine proportional to your income to a feminist non-profit rape survivors group.

Re:Am I getting old?

[EdIII]

If the good people are on one side of the argument, and you're on the other side, isn't that a clue that YOU'RE WRONG?

Wait... what? That's some pretty twisted logic you have there. How is it that you are determining the "good" side in an argument then making an absolutist statement in regards to the non-good side, based solely on your value judgement?

Wellll... karma is pretty much a statement of right or wrong correct? The karma system here at Slashdot seems to indicate that opposing statements to your views are "good" (all them +5's). Therefore, by your logic, you are indeed wrong .

The appropriate response is a self-criticism, an essay on exactly what you did wrong and how you'll never do it again, plus paying a fine proportional to your income to Slashdot

Re:Am I getting old?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi.

Porno culture, rape culture, American Patriarchy, fE-Mail and Womyn are all reactions to problems that really do exist. Really ineffective, corrosive reactions. I despise them and find them insulting and callous, not to mention arrogant, bigoted and ignorant.

I have lived through the hell of rape and a society and justice system that blames me for having male friends or not struggling "enough". I'm terrified to have friends or be intimate with anyone, lest I be raped and blamed again. I don't want to exempt myself from justice by deviating from the script of what rape is supposed to be. I understand thoroughly what "rape culture" is supposed to be. If there's one thing out there feeding the apathy, belligerence and ignorance about the realities of rape, though, it's terms like "rape culture". Or insisting on a boycott of someone for not agreeing with you, and attacking those who have never had an opportunity to really understand the problem as being somehow part of some conspiracy to destroy women.

1 in 6 women are raped, and that's a lot, but 1 in 33 men are raped and nobody ever talks about them. This isn't an evil oppressive males against poor oppressed women thing. Rape culture is a stupid, hateful, divisive term, but there is a lot of ignorance and apathy about what the actual issue entails. So, no, "deal with it, nerd" is not the best solution either. The best solution is treating other human beings with mutual respect and acknowledging the issue. So, comic stays up, the issue of rape as a very serious problem gets discussed and the comic gets clarified, and we all accept that we'll all have to learn about this issue one step at a time.

I don't read Penny Arcade or support anything they do anymore because of their callousness and dismissal of the issue of rape, not because I found their comic the teensiest bit offensive or because I think they are somehow "pro-rape". But I have a dear friend who still likes them, and he understands very well why their reaction to the dickwolves controversy (as serious as this issue is, it's hard not to giggle at the phrase "dickwolves controversy") was destructive and harmful. Just like some of the vitriol spewed at Penny Arcade is destructive and harmful - to them and to rape victims alike.

I don't give a shit who goes to PAX or who likes Penny Arcade as long as they understand the horrifying reality about the apathy towards rape and the marginalization of rape victims - especially male victims, who are usually made to feel so ashamed that they never get the help they need. Indeed, there are few resources to help them.

Not everyone who disagrees with you is a 'prat'.

Re:Am I getting old?

[Sprouticus]

The really amusing part about all this is that the comic just was not that funny. It was smart, telling, and exposed a huge hole in the gaming paradigm we are involved with. It was a great way to make a point. But it was NOT funny.

Re:Am I getting old?

[Anonymous Coward]

I assume the GP was being sarcastic. Right up until the end, it could almost be a face-value rant from some blog, but when it says:

... plus paying a fine proportional to your income to a feminist non-profit rape survivors group.

... I really can't imagine it being serious.

Re:Am I getting old?

[uninformedLuddite]

Does it make me a victim of comic book culture if I don't give a flying fsck what you (especially as an anonymous coward) has to say?
This politically correct, anything you might say and probably didn't except in the minds of the liberally twisted, life has meaning only if I am outraged about some BS that I perceive as an outrageous insult to a minority I am probably not a member of but know what is best for world that I find myself in these days is insulting.
That this story has turned into some thread more suitable to a paranoid men hating rant to be found in places like Shakesville is just another sign of the death of /.
Please do not report me to the punctuation/grammar purists as they are busy enough.
Maybe you could find some like minded, hairy legged, overall wearing, men haters with mod points and trash my karma publicly. That'll learn me.

Re:Am I getting old?

[uninformedLuddite]

replied to the wrong post. Sorry about calling you an AC but that's the only apology.

Re:Am I getting old?

[coinreturn]

Never heard of it

Me neither. I thought it was some new leap-year thing ("adding a day").

Re:Am I getting old?

[Anonymous Coward]

How does anyone justify going to a Penny Arcade convention? Why hasn't everyone joined the boycott? What kind of people go there? For the three people in the world who don't know, instead of apologizing to fans offended by their rape joke, Penny Arcade creators Mike Krahulik (left) and Jerry Holkins mocked the outrage with a Dickwolves T-shirt. The Dickwolves incident has transformed Penny Arcade from a welcoming, inclusive public commons to a place with a constituency â" however small â" that is hostile to outsiders. Such a con should, theoretically, endeavor to include rape survivors, as well as other marginalized groups, from non-white gamers to disabled gamers to genderqueer gamers.

Gee, dunno, I just went and here's what I saw:
1) Cross dressing cosplayers
2) A transgender individual midway through her sex change (I say her as that seems to be her targeted gender), again cosplaying a female character
3) Several panels about LBTG issues in gaming
4) A panel I attended, about sexuality in games, included a lesbian panel member and several LBTG people in the audience that felt free to stand up and ask questions openly (I saw no heckling or other negative behavior). The sexuality examples in games were not restricted to discussion of "straight sex".

PAX is not a big money making event for PA, if it was the tickets wouldn't be 65 bucks for the whole weekend. You're acting damn shrill and annoying and you're alienating people who'd otherwise probably lend you a hand in pushing for positive change. It's, of course, up to you how you want to act, I'm just telling you I think you're wrong about PAX and the way you're pushing for change is unlikely to convert anyone but the already converted.

Great Summary!

[Anonymous Coward]

That summary, sure had, a lot of commas, timothy.

Re:Great Summary!

[Nerdfest]

That generally indicates that the text should be read in the voice of William Shatner.

Pax Hospitis

[Empiric]

"Toss attachment for body aside, realizing I am everywhere. One who is everywhere is joyous."

--Osho

(This message brought to you by Smirnoff Triple Black, et al)

Well

[LiroXIV]

Now that it's legal to sell good video games in Australlia, I guess this type of pan-pacific expansion is a good thing.

Price

[Anonymous Coward]

In keeping with Australian video game practice, the PAX event there will cost twice as much as the American version. Because reasons.

Re:Price

[Bremic]

Also, all panels and discussions will be held with a 250-500ms latency, making the presenters actually being out of sync with the attendees.

Any confusion caused by this will be put down to "problems with your ISP".

Awesome events.

[RyanFenton]

I've been to E3 before PAX existed, and this year I'm at PAX Prime (And PAX Dev), and it's been a totally better experience all around.

1. No booth babes - don't get me wrong, I love the female form, but there's a huge difference between PAX fans of all shapes dressed up in what they genuinely want to, with real life behind it, and the going-through-the-motions gals hired at E3. Don't get me wrong - companies still specifically hire marketing girls between 20-30 from agencies in a lot of cases, but the lowered sleaze factor helps in making for an environment where nerd-sexy can thrive - and I fully support that.

2. Parties are way better. I remember the Rockstar events at E3, and so on - but just last night, I came from a creepy, but superb costume party held in a Mansion clone of the level they've been demoing, compete with a rather well-done ARG - it was certainly money wasted that really should have gone into the development, but as long as these companies waste the money, I did find the whole experience far more compelling than "here's some drinks and music and trailers, don't you think we're cool."

3. The folks are really a functioning community. Any time there's a slack, of someone's having a hard time, you'll find a lot of humanity there. I left my laptop in a room on the first day, and a chain of people helped make sure it got to the lost-and-found - and that's just a tiny story. "Don't be a dick" is still in its functional golden era there, and it doesn't look like it's faltering soon.

Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of healthy skepticism and differences in opinion, and hardships exist all over (mostly from 70,000 people), but it all works remarkably well. Enforcers (small army of volunteers) helps too.

Final day is tomorrow - bittersweet and exhausting, but still awesome.

Ryan Fenton

Re:Awesome events.

[flimflammer]

I don't think I've ever seen "don't get me wrong" used so many times in a single message before.

Re:Awesome events.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't get me wrong, don't get me wrong, don't get me wrong, don't get me wrong, don't get me wrong, don't get me wrong, don't get me wrong, but I don't think you can use don't get me wrong too many times.

Re:Awesome events.

[RyanFenton]

Yeah - It was quite late when I posted, and I was a little, well, loopy by then. 5 days of convention events and parties would frazzle anyone, I'd think.

Ryan Fenton

Leap year?

[Anonymous Coward]

At first I thought Australia was considering making 2013 a leap year...

Definitely a market for it in Aus.

[klingers48]

As somebody who unfortunately missed the Scott Kurtz/Kris Straub-presented "Video Games Unplugged" in Melbourne last April due to being unable to get mid-week off work, I would blissfully welcome a local PAX convention in Melbourne or Sydney.

There's definitely a critical mass of convention-starved gamers here in Australia and probably a fair lot in New Zealand too that would love a chance to experience some of what we only read about in the American cons.

Re:Definitely a market for it in Aus.

[drinkypoo]

It would really be nice to just see more cons in general. East, west, central, etc. Instead of forcing everyone to travel, travel to everyone. Obviously you need a certain mass before you can divide, however...

Re:Definitely a market for it in Aus.

[Macgrrl]

It was a really cool evening, made even neater by seeing so many familiar faces.

Scalpers and cost

[Anonymous Coward]

I was going to go, but then the "all passes sold-out online to ebay scalpers within 24 hours" thing happened and I just gave up. Anyone know what the going price ended up being?

I hope they have some plan to fix the problem next year... Like reserving a large fraction of passes as non-transferable. (Specify name when purchasing, must show up with valid photo ID.)

Hey look everyone, an idiot on the internet!

[TiggertheMad]

How does anyone justify going to a Penny Arcade convention?

What is there to be justified? They have done nothing wrong.

Why hasn't everyone joined the boycott?

See point 1; also, nobody cares. You are clearly an exceedingly stupid person, so I will break this down for you:

The humorous point of the comic strip in question is the perpetually unchanging state of NPCs in MMOs, and the strange quest systems that only incentives freeing of a selected number of slaves. Think now, if you were a really good person, wouldn't you give out a quest to free all of them? For the indifference of the player to really seem callous, (and thus HUMOROUS), the slave is revealing the awful conditions they must endure.

Does the player character ever say, 'OMFG, YOU ARE RAPED, YOU DESERVE IT!'? No. There isn't anything even vaguely hinting that rape is somehow OK or acceptable. In fact if there was, the joke wouldn't really work, would it?

If you were upset over this web comic, I would think you had low reading comprehension or some sort of over-developed sense of political correctness. The fact that years later, you are still losing your shit over this tells me that you are a true imbecile. Because you are taking umbrage and holding a grudge at a truly trivial event, when far worse things are occurring than a video game convention. (And a remarkably progressive one at that: PAX panels this year addressed GBLT gaming, among other things). Go boycott the Catholic church, the people who have systematically hid and protected serial pedophile rapists for decades. Or, how about working on recalling Todd 'Legitimate Rape' Akin from office? No, instead you are losing your shit over a comic that isn't even really about rape.

What kind of people go there?

Thankfully, not you. But don't let me dissuade you, I had a great time being surrounded by truly wonderful people this year. Your non-attendance is appreciated, it keeps the jerk factor good and low.

Just 2 Words

[Gablar]

Acquisitions Incorporated

point of order

[Anonymous Coward]

PAX East is larger then PAX Prime.

Friday...

[akpak]

It was announced Friday morning during Gabe & Tycho's Q&A. Not Saturday. Friday.