Fifty thousand people attended PAX this year.  If you are not familiar with what this is, a couple of guys named Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins create a web comic called Penny Arcade, largely considered the most popular gaming comic on the internet and a well trusted game review site.  You may also know them from their yearly charity Child's Play Charity which collects donations of toys and money to provide games and toys for sick children in hospitals around the world.  Five years ago they decided to throw a LAN party for gamers to meet and play games together.  Since that time it has grown to the largest gaming convention in North America, filling the Seattle Convention Center to the gills with geeks, gamers and misfits from all over the globe. 

By now you have gathered that I will be saying the word "gamer" a lot.  It is unavoidable.  I am a gamer to the core, it is what I love to do, it is who I am.  If you don't like games, you are clearly not like me.  I am not here to talk about games, rather I want to talk about how this event is unique.

We are used to the type of convention where we walk up to a booth and a product is displayed or demonstrated to us, we politely talk about how interested we are in it, exchange a business card or email address for a key chain and move on.  Let's be honest, most of us go to those conventions because it is paid vacation away from work with an expense budget.  While there is a giant exhibition hall in PAX with booths from companies in the sort of way you might expect, the difference is that every booth you go to you can actually get your hands on the game they are showing you and play it.  If not that, it is a booth displaying various geek wares such as funny T-Shirts and anime chibi dolls.  Although it certainly has a draw for a company to be there and show off a game, I feel comfortable there just coming up and trying out a game and leaving a booth.  It was really genuinely fun exploring, collecting some really cool schwag and taking pictures of all the cool sights.

The exhibition floor is the tip of the iceberg.  On top of that, you have two entire floors dedicated to just playing games.  No companies, no advertisements, nobody asking you to pay attention to them.  There were two giant rooms filled with bean bag chairs that everyone was welcome to sit on, play their hand held games, talk, even take a nap.  There were rooms where you could check out consoles and games for free and play whatever you wanted with your friends, alone or complete strangers.  Striking up a game of Magic with the funny guy with the green hair was as easy as asking because everyone there is a gamer!  Across the street was an entire building dedicated to board and tabletop games.  Check out any board game from a gigantic library and try it out with some friends.  We tried out a game called Stonehenge and had ourselves a chariot race, it cost us nothing.  There were even GMs on hand to run you through some standard dungeon crawls in AD&D 4th Edition and win prizes based on how far you got in a set amount of time.  There was a room that let you use PCs for gaming or even bring your own computer to kick back for a game of Team Fortress 2 and get away from the din of the loud exhibition hall.

Maybe you like competition?  Tournaments abundantly filled every time slot of the conference.  Board games, video games, rythm games, you name it and there was a tournament to see how you fared against other attendees.  Looking back on the schedule I thought I had done everything I wanted to do, until I saw that I had missed the Settlers of Catan tournament!  And If only I could have made the Starcraft tourney!

Right, I got a little carried away, I promised I wouldn't talk about the games.  So, if that was not enough, there is a keynote speaker.  This year it was Ken Levine.  He did a great job of talking about being a closet gamer all of his life until he found his niche.  There are many other talks given about subjects like "The Growing Role of Women in the Industry", "Video Games and Piracy" and "Designing a Free-to-Play Game".  Really inspiring stuff that tells the tale of the gaming industry maturing and learning to become the fully fledged media art form that it can potentially be.  There were also Q&A sessions with Jerry and Mike which is really just fan service but really fun to watch. 

Finally, there are the concerts.  Really?  Yes, bands that sing about being nerds and playing video games.  The internet icon Johnathat Coulton came to wow us with his inspiring acoustic charm, including a duet with Felicia Day singing "Still Alive".  Also appearing were The OneUps, Freezepop, Anamanaguchi, Darkest of the Hillside Thickets, MC Frontalot and The Minibosses.  I don't want to go link crazy on that, but it really was entertaining in a "I'm glad I am not watching Warrant playing at my high school reunion" kind of way.

The whole three day affair is a mere $40 ticket, and of course your travel and hotel.  What you can see here though is that the focus of the convention is on the attendees, not on the companies coming to hawk their wares.  I have to tell you that having a convention that is so fun and comfortable has a really positive effect on my experience there and from this one visit alone there are at least 5 products that I will purchase that I was not aware of before.  As far as conferences go, this is the bee's knees.  What could be better than, "There's nothing I'd rather be doing than this"?