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GeekNights Tuesday - PAX Australia 2013
Tonight on GeekNights, we return triumphant from PAX Australia to talk about... PAX Australia! PC gaming and anime are big there, and it was in all senses a proper PAX. It was, however, in a BIG TOP. In the news, Steam Summer Sale aside, there is talk of collusion in fight game tournaments and things aren't looking so great for Nintendo as the Wii continues to outsell the Wii-U, and they're making a lot of their money from Candy Box games. Maybe they should just break the glass and make the Pokemon MMO.
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I am 100% certain that you encountered the kind of people you did at PAX Aus because the only people at PAX Aus are internet people who follow Penny Arcade. Spiderman guy absolutely exists at our standard pop culture conventions (but probably not to the same degree as in the US - we don't have the population or comics media involvement to sustain a lot of interest).
PAX Aus's food situation was pretty unusual! Big cons in Australia usually have the awful food (provided by the grounds, under contract), too. I've been wondering how Penny Arcade got around it since I first saw all the market stalls. Sometimes small cons can get away with having good outsourced food vendors but I've never seen a big con do it on a showgrounds. Penny Arcade probably just has enough cachet to be able to negotiate different contracts. I'm from Brisbane though - maybe Melbourne isn't as strict.
As more recent comparison figures come out, we should see DS phat & lite pull ahead of the 3DS, but it's surprisingly close as of now.
I found the candid banter between Rym and Scott hilarious too. It's like they are 2 sides of the same coin.
When I went over a few months back I decided to keep an open mind and go with the flow. I'd recognise when something was a cultural difference, accept it and move on.
Then at the end of my holiday my friend asked me what the weirdest thing about her country was from my perspective. And somehow I could not think of anything right then.
I ended up coming up with all the inane stuff. Then I felt like I must be the most stupid person for failing to pay attention the most important part of the experience.
Of course I'm from England so the cultural differences you saw won't be the same ones as me.
The PC room had a fiber line to it which is why many people were joining public servers and becoming gods at any FPS. The 45 minute time limit was so crappy, I swear half the time I would get between 20 - 30 minutes unless there was no line.
All the green stylized t-shirts ended up selling out, I bought my Merch on Friday because Rym and Scott had mentioned to buy merchandise prior to the Saturday / Sunday in past PAX episodes.
There was more buying on Friday then on Saturday and Sunday but part of this reason may have been there were younger people going, possibly with less money. It's conjecture on my part.
I'm doing my thing, wandering the line near wombat, and Cheese rocks up as you guessed since I'm telling a story about a brother. We chat about the show, swap stories, just usual talking shit as you do.
We're nattering, he mentions he's hungry, I'm a little peckish(read - fucking starving, since I'd been living off fruit bars and energy drinks for about two days at this point) and I say words to that effect - and no joke, dude just right there says "What do you want?"
I tell him, so ten minutes and a whip out to the fish and chip shop later, brother shows up with what can only be described as a notable geological feature composed entirely of hot chips, crowned with a crumbed sausage that glistened in the dim light like god's own artery clogger, the fucking sight of it nearly made me weep with joy. It was like Mana from heaven, you've never tasted hot chips and a crumbed sausage that were as perfect as that meal eaten while talking with cheese and keeping my line in order.
I walked up and down the entire tabletop area until I gave up and sat down to play some games with strangers.
That time you missed us might have been when Scrym went down to the queue room to hold a Burning Wheel demo.
1. American food outside of major cities is usually terrible in ways other countries can't quite match. That caterers in Melbourne are waaaaaay better than convention concession stands is obvious.
2. Can't wait to listen to the Australia podcast.
Big top is a permanent structure of the Melbourne showgrounds. Melbourne showgrounds is not a racecourse, it's just next to one, Flemington Racecourse.
Random note - A number of the enforcers who met Scrym at the gate were my Wombats. In fact, when I noted to them that I'd met "my Americans" at the gate, they named scrym, asked if it was them and said universally that they seemed pretty cool. For those who know him, Langri was Sat theatre manager and therefore my boss, and he was 160% fantastic, great dude.
As for panels, Skippy filled 99% of the time(because aside from being fucked up, it was tiny), and wombat filled about 99% of the time. For Beyond D&D, we were turning people away for a good half an hour, 45 minutes before the panel started - from a 220 cap room. From memory, only three to five panels didn't fill all weekend in wombat, and two of them were late-night movies. The ones that didn't fill were usually still pretty close, within ten of filling.
Other cons are limited to local cons, and Supernova. There are panels, you do get a bunch of panels at them, but supernova is more of an expo show than a content show, as far as I remember.
Con food was, indeed, okay, but fucking expensive. Nothing new there, it's expected. The supermarket outside was a Coles, bog standard.
We all go out to bars to hang out. Mana bar is tiny - 75 seat - or was, because it shut down almost immediately post-pax. Bars are indeed quieter, it's a bar culture thing and a legal thing. Live music nights are SUPER FUCKING LOUD though, and in fact, the legal part is really having a detrimental effect on our live music scene.
I have the spider shirt, but not the logo shirt. But I have SO MANY pins.
Rym still can't pronounce Melbourne quite right and Scott does, but his G'day is better than Scott's.
Apparently, a fucking SHITLOAD of people were asking Mike and Jerry if PAX was coming back, and treated them with some skepticisim when they were told yes. And yes, it's confirmed for 2014, and as far as I know, it's showgrounds again, but that's not absolutely confirmed to the best of my knowledge.
I propose Asian Beer Cafe as our new Traditional PAX AUS boozing spot. Drinks are cheap, food is good, and it's geek friendly. So, good times.