PAX East, Day 1

Whew.  Today was a long day.  I attended one panel discussion and one movie, separated by four hours of waiting.

The panel discussion was Design An RPG In An Hour, lead by David Hill and his wife (whose name I don't remember).  It was a light and whimsical discussion that was heavy on designing game themes and less on game mechanics.  I suppose there's only so much that one can cover in an hour (the game that we decided on was Scoop! : a Game of Cold-Blooded Journalism! featuring dinosaur reporters trying to uncover tales of conspiracy).

I learned something important at PAX: if one wished to attend two back-to-back events held in the same room, then one may not linger around in said room; one must leave that room and reenter the line for the second event.  I missed the "Storytelling in the World of Interactive Fiction" discussion as a result.  I shall bear this in mind for the rest of the weekend when planning my events.  I'll need to look around for an online transcript or podcast of this missed panel discussion; it was a subject that I was really interested in hearing.

I had some down time, so I wandered around the exhibition hall and saw some neat games: of note was Power Gig, a competitor to Rock Band (but uses a six string guitar instead of a push-button guitar), as well as Open Chord, which is more of a do-it-yourself version of Rock Band.

Two other games caught my eye: Red Dead Redemption by Rockstar Games, a very impressive first-person shooter set in the Old West; and Limbo for the XBox, a moody black and white platform game.

Throughout the convention hall were Sumo beanbag chairs.  These things were pretty awesome.

My evening ended with previewing the documentary Get Lamp.  This was a more of a "very long trailer," as director Jason Scott phrased it.  The film is still being edited, so we saw a special director's cut that gave us a general feel for documentary.  One especially fascinating sequence concerned interviews with three blind Interactive Fiction players.  It was intriguing to listen to their perspective on playing these games (one player mentioned commented on the need for a light source: "It's dark and I can't see? Like, so what?").

I didn't stay around for the panel discussion, as the pace was a little slow and unfocused and I was finally all Conned-out for the evening.  There's still tomorrow and Sunday for more gaming and panel discussions.