PAX Australia 2013. It’s their second year in Australia this time around. I’m a huge gamer so I was really looking forward to this event!
What I had learned from my American pals prior to flying out to Melbourne from Sydney was that this convention was largely run by the exact same people as the American counterpart. Boy was I in for a real surprise. Follow me on my journey of this wonderful experience.
First Impressions
Panels
Photography and Rain
Personally I was hoping to get a bunch of kickass shots of the great cosplay on display at PAX. However the rain decided to be a real jerk. Hopefully I’ll get a bit luckier with the weather next year so I can provide you guys with some more photos than what I’ve got on display at the moment.
Video games!
As I said earlier, I’m a pretty avid gamer. And by avid, I mean that I play anything ranging from NES, Neo Geo, Dreamcast to PS3 and literally anything in between for the last 25 years now. On top of that I follow the indie scene pretty closely. When I first walked into the main hall, I felt like a little kid in a candy shop. I didn’t know where to go or what to do! There was just so much, almost too much for me to check out. Thankfully PAX was a 3 day convention so I could really take my time with it. Got to speak to nearly every indie developer there. The developer of the brilliant mind bending first person puzzle game, Alex Bruce AKA Demruth, really stood out to me. Some of the questions I threw at him were pretty personal. He had absolutely no issues giving me some intimate insight on what it’s like working your ass off on a game like this followed by the release of it. Next year I’ll be sure to try and record these interviews with these video game developers as I believe I can ask them the real questions that matter.
Outside of that what was great was that there was no real overcrowding. If I wanted to play a game or simply walk around. It was easy. The venue was nice and spacious, they really accommodated for the size of the audience which is something you rarely see at Australian cons. I’m looking at you Supanova.
Conclusion
Every convention organiser needs to look at PAX. They are doing things perfectly right. It was smooth, comfortable, well organised, friendly and fun!
If you’re a gamer and you can’t decide on which con to go to, forget all the other ones and save all your pretty pennies for PAX Australia. It’ll be interesting to see of EB Expo will be able to step up their game this October in Sydney.
I’ll be heading there personally too and will be giving you guys some brutally honest coverage.
