My PAX Experience

Hey there blog viewers!

Yeah, I was starting to wonder if I remembered this existed too. I ended up having a pretty awesome experience and wanted to share it with all of you!

I had the ridiculously good fortune to end up going to PAX West through the graces of a generous person. And it was remarkable for the reasons that are obvious and so much more.

For those that don’t know, PAX is the Penny Arcade Expo, a convention that is held in multiple cities and celebrates everything in video and board games. Exhibitions halls are full of publishers and developers showing off their upcoming titles, vendors selling gaming-flavored wares, and communities making beautiful cases for everyone to have a chance to play. Outside of the exhibition hall and in various nearby buildings are panels devoted to a variety of subjects, along with freeplay and tournaments for folks to play a round of just about anything from Catan to Mortal Kombat.

Predictably it’s the expo halls where my first memory of PAX forms. I didn’t have a lot of time to explore on the first day of the exhibition, but I was AWESTRUCK. I had always been one to enjoy tours of E3 hall floors and I felt that same sense of splendor.

2K had giant murals of the new player characters in Borderlands 3 and a larger-than-life statue making for good photo opportunities. Bungie arrived to promote the new expansion Shadowkeep and, while in line to play a round of Control, I felt more welcomed by the folks I was in line with then with any other facet of the community before. Square Enix has multiple booths, and the space devoted to Final Fantasy VII’s remake was a real production complete with a motorcycle to pose with.

Naturally there were a lot of booths to visit both large and small, and it would take entirely too long to go through each one. Point is though, PAX is a convention filled with fans getting to interact with their favorite titles in ways most folks can’t. It’s a beautiful thing to see people of all backgrounds, ethnicities, ages, gender identities and sexual orientations embrace complete strangers and talk about the experiences they shared in common ground.

It was crazy that while I was experiencing this extreme fraternity, I received a text from someone that had been told he should stop playing games because he was an adult. In that moment I was eating a far-too-expensive hamburger, and I looked up to see kids cheering friends on in a casual Fortnite tournament, many adults slaying monsters in Code Vein and even the US Army showing off their eSports team in Call of Duty. In other parts of the hall it wouldn’t be hard to see smiles wide as they became Iron Man in VR, non-binary representation in Arcade Spirits or Boyfriend Dungeon.

Whomever said that clearly couldn’t see the spectacle of community I saw. But there’s no doubt y’all, games are for everyone to enjoy. There’s plenty more I want to say about my PAX experience, but I’ll save that for another time.

For now don’t let the folks online get you down about gaming. If you enjoy it, keep relishing in it. And if you’re curious and want to explore it, know that there are good folk waiting to welcome you regardless of how you play.