Conventions

31st March
2010
written by Charlie

If Vericon was a shot across the bow for Boston geeks, PAX was a carpet bombing assault. Yet now we look forward one weekend and in the same location we have ANOTHER three-day geek event: Anime Boston.

The thing about PAX East was that for the most part, it was just 60,000 people in black t-shirts and red plastic badges. The weight of their presence was clear and definite, for in it’s way, also largely ignorable by the general populace. Anime Boston however will feature throngs of girls in Link drag, innumerable ninjas with open toed shoes, and warriors with montrous cardboard weapons in hand and spiky hair. It will certainly be more meaningful and harder to ignore for the locals.

As we move into the second half of our Month of Geek Weekends, I wonder if this is all a good thing for the local geek community or a bad thing. Does making Boston the Mecca of east coast geek activity mean we’ll see more geeks locally and more geek infrastructure like comic book shops, arcades, and sushi bars, or will the close proximity of so many large events cause them all to mutually destroy each other by lowering everyone’s attendance below critical mass?

30th March
2010
written by Charlie

This past weekend a gamer was caught trying to download the code for the XBLA game Breach onto his laptop during PAX East. When asked by the staff why he was plugged into the Atomic Games network, he said flat out that he was copying the game so he could play it at home and share it with his friends.

The guy had also also previously had his gamertag banned from Xbox Live for stealing Forza 3 and playing it early. The weird thing is that he asked the XBox Live Director of Policy and Enforcement to unban him during a panel at PAX East.

So, how do you explain this guy? Is he a true believer in digital freedom, willing to defy The Man because data and fun want to be free, or is he just slow to absorb the idea that companies want you to buy their products and don’t like it when you steal them?

GamingBolt article with more detail and video of the suspect here.

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30th March
2010
written by Charlie

Some people have observed a lonely or sterile atmosphere at PAX East this past weekend. At first, I attributed it to PAX East’s immense size, but in retrospect maybe it’s as simple as this: when you go to a scifi or anime or comic book convention, you collectively share your love of the subject at hand in a kind of group worship which forces you to reach out and connect. At an event like PAX, almost everyone is at a console or sitting with their DS, which draws their attention inward and away from the masses around them. I found that that liveliest and most social rooms at PAX’s free play areas were the board game, RPG, and card areas. The console free play areas were significantly lonelier feeling, even though they were larger and better attended.

The group interaction of more traditional board games or media consumption lends itself more easily to social connections that portable or console play.

29th March
2010
written by Charlie

In spite of selling completely out of tickets. Registration and entry was smooth and orderly.

A friend told me this weekend that a con is generally considered a success when it breaks even within the first three years of operation. If that is a true measure, PAX East has got to have hit the home run the first time out. In the days leading up to the event, I checked the registration page for ticket availability for my friends who had been unlucky or negligent in their pre-ordering, and EVERYTHING was sold out. The only ways left to get into PAX East by the Tuesday before the event was unwritten and probably nefarious. (more…)

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