PAX is good for families

So I haven't posted in... way too long. I'm surprised I still have loyal readers who keep coming back to check! I keep changing jobsand throwing my life into disarray, which takes precedence over blogging for me.

Anyways a while back I read Scott Jennings rant on Penny Arcade and PAX.

Scott Jennings:

But the problem is PAX. PAX, or Penny Arcade Expo, has fairly quickly become the primary go-to convention for gamer culture – what everyone who tried to sneak into E3 thought E3 was supposed to be. Lots of lan parties, game demos, 2nd tier science fiction actors, and Jonathan Coulton concerts. Geek nirvana, essentially. And game companies have embraced PAX because of that critical mass of success.

Basically "the problem" is he doesn't think people should support PAX because the people behind PAX are also the people behind Penny Arcade. Like maybe we shouldn't support whatever company he works for because of his opinions on his blog? Penny Arcade is an adult and often offensive webcomic. It is my third favorite webcomic and I can firmly say it is third because as much as it sometimes makes me laugh it can not infrequently gross me out and much more frequently offend me. Not as badly as "Saturday Night Live" has a penchant for grossing me out and offending me (i.e. Ambigously Gay Duo), but still all the same Penny Arcade does. So should I boycott every Dan Akroyd movie because he was one of the creative minds behind SNL?

Maybe Scott Jennings would like to denounce Child's Play too? The charity which raises millions of dollars to help out hospitalized children all around the world on behalf of gamers, typically the youngest generation who are normally less likely to be involved with charity?

Here is my take. You don't want to support evil, but Penny Arcade is in no way evil and it is the free expression of a couple of artists which you don't have to follow if you don't want to. PAX and Child's play are entirely separate entities. There is no good reason not to support them if you feel like it.

So just because I go to PAX every year and take my two daughters, doesn't mean any of us are supporting over endowed wolves or sex offending fruit juicers. It does mean we support gaming and having fun!

PAX is now a great holiday

Here is what I took away from PAX. My oldest now considers PAX one of the greatest of holidays. She was begging me to take her back today and yesterday. I asked her what was so great about PAX and she proclaimed presents, toys, getting stuff, etc. So I asked her what about Halloween or Christmas because those are coming up? She said yeah, they're as good as going to convention and that Convention, Halloween and Christmas are her favorite holidays.

So Sallust might not know it yet, but I'm going to have to talk Dear Guild Leader into going to some more conventions with kids before PAX 2010.

Legend of Neil Panel at PAX 09

Wow, Tony Janning are Sandeep Parrikh are two very funny and... very Crass guys. I kind of feel guilty about laughing at their show. But amazingly enough I don't feel more guilty adding a link to it at the bottom of my blog.

So warning, if you watch the video I took of them these guys have a wicked dirty sense of humor.



In general PAX 09 has just been simply amazing. Huge exhibits, more prizes than last year (though not as many as the early years). I only heard of one bad panel (Sex in video games). Plus so many fun games of all types were there to be played or watched (RPGs, board games galore, card games, Console Tournaments, PC tournaments and more).

Much, much more on PAX 09 yet to come. I'm probably going back today for a little bit more, especially as the Elemental Pre-order is $10 off at PAX.

New Anima Tactics video

In the midst of getting ready for PAX. It is a much bigger endeavor when you're leaving your kids behind for a day. Gone are the days of just doing things, now I've got to make sure there isn't going to be a revolt by the children to overthrow my wife's dictatorship while I'm gone. With young children in the house I'm afraid even one day of gaming convention bliss can be too much, and here I was hoping to have a weekend pass. Given with a weekend pass I probably would have spent about the same amount of time actually at the convention but spaced it out more and returned home for more time.

Anyways, the real reason for this post is that I put another Anima Tactics video up explainging force formation for the game. I hope it entertains and informs.

PAX is completely FULL

Wow. They sold out the entire Seattle convention center a week before PAX even starts. I'm lucky that I got my saturday tickets as the 3-day pass sold out the day before I was able to get mine. Still I should hopefully have a lot of good pictures and videos from PAX to show by next week.

Other than that I don't expect any news in gaming until PAX. So I'll try and get some videos made of my terrain projects (trees done for swamp project) and maybe some videos for Anima Tactics or VOR.

Back briefly

Well the ocean was fun... and a lot of work with 3 kids. The kids are stressing me out these days, but we're all cooped up at home together going nuts. Hopefully I can leave the unemployment rolls soon in a good way and life returns to sanity.

Though when I got back I learned that PAX 3 day passes had sold out before I got a chance to buy one!!!! ahhhh!! Anyone got one they're not using?

Post GenCon and pre-Pax gaming news seems to be rather slow. Doesn't seem like much in the way of big announcements came out of Gencon. Did I miss something?

Also, the head (outgoing? they're being absorbed into Square-Enix) of Eidos is an idiot. He hates the whole second-hand games market. Does he prefer people just pirate his games if they don't want to pay full retail price? Look, the reason people sell games is because of these:

1) they didn't like it - it sucked.
2) There wasn't enough game there - they played it out thoroughly in a short amount of time
3) Post release support for the game was lacking

People BUY games, they DON'T RENT GAMES. Ask the "U.S." (no, not Toyota and the companies which make their cars actually in the U.S.) auto companies, they don't like used cars either but there are benefits to it. Why do people trade in cars at auto dealers? the same reason people sell USED games... to buy new ones. When you're a game producer complaining about used games... it is because people are selling your game for one of the above reasons and buying new someone elses game.

The solution is simple MAKE QUALITY GAMES. Pick one of the above three reasons for game sales (problems for some designers) and work on it till people don't sell your games any more. So that instead they sell your competitors' games in order to buy yours.

Maybe notice that you'll never see a Stardock game for resale, but plenty of people ditching bad Eidos games to buy them. Stardock are the ones who introduced The Gamer's Bill of Rights pictured to the right. They're also one of the companies with top selling games who never use any DRM on their games. How can they do it? They're games are great, replayability is high, and you'd never pirate their games because you wouldn't get the wonderful post retail support Stardock offers.

It is why Elemental is the only MUST BUY game of the year.

U.S. Constitution, Amendment 1

Sigh, I think I've had my fill from the U.S. media this last week. Get ready for a religion & gaming rant in this blog (or stop reading now).

Does it seem like the only thing that won't get mocked by the U.S. news when it comes to religion is Atheism and Islam? Even though combined they still make up less than 10% of the total U.S. population. Earlier this week I read and watched lots of news about how every Christian and all of the Right Wing media is incitement towards domestic terrorism. Yet just before and also the same day we saw terrorist/hate crime acts by Muslims played down in the mainstream media. Thank goodness for the internet and bloggers who will present things that the Cable news networks and Newspapers won't.

I think what was really over the top was the media response to President Obama's speech this week. I'm not going to talk about the speech or the merits of it, you're all welcome to your own political persuasions. But in the U.S. I saw the media stooping to a level deference for Islam that would knock me over flat if they did the same for Christianity, Judaism or even Buddhism. Here is the media emoticon version:

Muslim World = 8D
Christian Nation = ~:(
Jewist State = >:-[

Now I'll be open and honest, I've got respect for a lot of religions but the "Religion of Peace" has yet to win my good neighbor "wouldn't it be nice to have more of those nice folks living next to you" award. While I appreciate the cultures and people of Europe and the Middle East, the months of my life spent in those parts of the world have made me very, very, very grateful to be living in a country with Freedom of Religion protections for as long as it can be made to last.

So what does any of this have to do with gaming? Enter Electronic Arts, already known for draconian measures against paying customers to take control of their computers and make sure you're not doing anything they don't approve of because you've played one of their games. Known for paying bottom dollar in the game industry to its employees, being the first to layoff, hostile corporate takeovers, and having the most MMO games close servers after release. Well here is another one:


EA is now inventing fake religious controversies over their games to try and get media attention.



Easily believed to be another wacky group of Christians right? Well a lot of people believed so, but this is actually an EA publicity stunt. If this had been done as a joke, I might have taken it as one but AP news actually had to do some research to determine it was a fake. I find this as funny as a fake Suicide bomber, fake Self-immolating monk, or an Anti-Semitic joke.

It has already been my policy to not buy EA games because you have no idea what their software is going to do to your computer since they have demonstrated time after time having 0 respect for their customers. But after this kind of gross public misconduct I'm ready to start my own Electronic Arts boycott that extends to Wii games and every platform. I'm not into boycott petitions, but just hurting them where it counts... their bottom line.

Now on to another E3 note:
I guess the good side of the fake Electronics Arts protest is that the E3 security recognized their constitutional right to assemble on a public sidewalk and FAKE protest. Unfortunately they didn't do it out of principle as they tried to have these booth babe protesters removed from the public sidewalk. This also happened to be another fake protest, fake protesting the $3,000 fine for having booth babes wearing bikinis inside the Adults Only E3... in Los Angeles.

Soooooo, yeah. Skip E3, if you have any sense go to PAX which so far has never failed to have more common sense and more respect for your 1st Amendment Rights.

PAX 2008 is over, long live PAX!

Well it has taken me a while to catch up on things to blog again after PAX. Much is happening especially with a 3rd child on the way!!!

But back to PAX. Friday night of PAX I just enjoyed the show room mostly. My personal highlights were the Turbine booth, Stardock booth, Blizzard booth, and Nintendo Wii booth. I like seeing that Nintendo is making use of the balance board in future games coming out as Wii fit just doesn't seem to do enough on its own. Now if they'd only rush out an adapter for their wireless LAN on the wii because some of us don't like the security issues of wireless or need to unnecessarily upgrade our wired routers. Starcraft 2 impresses, hopefully it isn't a DRM let down like Spore was. At the same time Stardock made a showing of the Gamer's Bill of Rights. The battle is on and I fully expect Stardock to win it, put my money down on David rather than Goliath. Customers want to be treated like respected customers and not like criminals who are all suspect of being thieves.
Best PAX party award definitely goes to Turbine and LOTRO again this year and was supported by Stratics rather than IGN. Got to love a party with catering, games, and prizes! This year our whole family got awesome T-shirts and I won a "Razor" gaming mouse. The Mouse is actually spiffy and my ability to frag in CounterStrike is slightly improved! The girls as you can see fit into their shirts very appropriately.

I also got to try out the new character classes for Lord of the Rings Online expansion: The Mines of Moria. The Warden was an interesting character class, if you like a medium range Guardian with special solo conjunctions called Gambits then the Warden class will be for you. Myself, I was instantly hooked on the Runekeeper. This is a squishy caster class with nuking and healing, both of which are very powerful. Most people's reaction will be that it is overpowered and it would be if they could do both at once. Runekeepers have an interesting new dynamic where there is a slider based on what type of abilities you've been using. Are you tending towards greater attacks or trying to heal? As the slider moves towards damage or healing you get a boost to the effectiveness of the one you're using and a reduction in the ability to do the opposite. Also the slider being at a certain position is required for some of the more powerful abilities. So yes you can be an incredible nuking mage type if needed but you're healing abilities will be inferior to just using a potion, but if the encounter needs it you can be all healer. Very interesting gameplay and very tactical by the seat of your pants, I'm instantly hooked on it.

Saturday was Anima: Tactics tournament day and was disappointing in turnout. We didn't get the proper tables from PAX, Fantasy Flight didn't show up with terrain, and only 3 of us where there in an undecorated room to play. At least we had a healthy amount of interest in spectators. I also got to purchase the RPG book in advance at PAX along with a large character Konosuke who probably won't be in stores for another month yet. I sure hope next year the tournament scene is done a lot better.

VOR on sunday was also slow but got a lot of interested people looking at the battle Scott and I were having. Only two of us playing with paper terrain, but it was fun as always! With any luck if things keep up we'll be playing Vor 2.0 early next year. Next year PAX will hopefully be even more fun, I'm always looking forward to it!

PAX is coming

PAX is coming this weekend. I'm greatly looking forward to it at this point.

Friday I'm heading straight for the Fantasy Flight Games booth and hoping to pick up a copy of the new Anima: Beyond Fantasy RPG. Also maybe a couple new early release figures for Anima: Tactics. Second will be Turbine to see what LotRO has to offer for going back to the game. I am looking forward to the expansion and maybe it can get me back into the game on a somewhat casual basis. My family will be going to the party they sponsor that evening. Also on the agenda is to scope out any good Wii games that nintendo or other companies might be showcasing. We've got like 4 games for it right now? Most of the games just don't interest, but PAX is the place where the good stuff will be shown off. Friday if possible but maybe later in the weekend I intend to stop by Microsoft and tell them that I'm a Shadowrun player waiting for them to make good on the franchise. The most recent x-box game and the latest edition of pen and paper have been serious disappointments so make this latest one something to be proud of.

Saturday I'll be helping with the Anima: Tactics tournament since I'm an official demoer. I'm hoping we have a good turn out and I really wish I could be playing in the tournament but I think it will be a lot of fun just getting the playing scene going. Maybe Cipher Dave and I can get a good game going on the sidelines though at least!

Sunday is our guerrilla VOR gaming. There will be at least 3 of us there for playing VOR and just showing people that the game is still alive.

That is a lot of gaming for one weekend and I can't wait for it to get here!

Seattle bound

Well changes at my place of employment are starting to suck. After being chewed out by a new manager for being too much of a family man despite getting all my assigned projects done [b]ahead[/b] of schedule. I'm "unreliable" by which my current manager means predictability and unambitious is better than an employee who gets results. I like to teams, efficiency and achievable goals, not just punch a clock for 40 hours a week so this is kind of tough for me. So since my wife and I have discussed moving to Seattle this has kind of clinched it and we're definitely planning on making the move back to my northern stomping ground.

So I guess this hopefully means I should have no excuse to miss PAX08 this year! Unfortunately it is too late for Vor 2.0 to be part of the PAX 10. I still look forward to meeting the Turbine crew again and razzing them, free stuff, new games to see, and most of all this year hopefully getting in a good tournament of Anima: Tactics and finding Vor players to play against.

In the meantime I'm hoping to get down and finish up some of the many terrain projects we have floating around. I've finished up most of my models but have way too much terrain in an incomplete state. I hope to get some of it down and have some pictures before my next post. Which is kind of easy since I decide when I will post. Mwa ha ha! Any bets on when?