It’s been a full week since we got back from PAX, and I finally feel caught up to the point where I can start recounting that wonderful, chaotic, amazing, and exhausting experiencing. So here it goes!
We flew out to PAX on Wednesday 8/28, and we spent a good part of the day before packing. Boy, did we need it. We rounded up the buttons into a big pile and then threw a box of posters, some t-shirts, bullet USBs, and log books onto that pile—giveaways, check. We decided to bring George’s iMac, a beast of a gaming laptop that we take to all the shows, an Ultrabook that Intel generously provided us to test on, headsets from Syba, and all the peripherals and networking gear that we needed. A note on the Syba headsets—they rumble… And that is a good thing, trust me 🙂
We had to fit all of that into two bags. My strategy was pretty simple: don’t break George’s iMac. So I got 4 huge rolls of bubble wrap and built a cocoon around the iMac. After the IndieCade Showcase at E3, I got the wrapping and packing job down to a science.
But as it turned out, packing the iMac was the easy part. The buttons and posters were way heavier than 1 bag could bear, so I had to repack four times just to get both bags under 45lbs otherwise be fined by the airline. Packing for a show is never easy.
Our flight out was delayed for about 3 hours. Delayed flight going to a show? A tradition by now. We got in at about 1:00am pacific time and had to sort through Holiday Inn Express, once again, messing up our reservation. Feeling smarter staying at a Holiday Inn Express? Somehow I don’t think people should trust us averting nuclear plant meltdowns (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dOHEw8izno). We were exhausted, but once we got to our room and tried to unpack, the arduous trip took a surreal turn.
I tried to open my bag, but realized that it had a lock on it. I tried to unscramble the combination, but couldn’t. Then it hit me. This was not my lock! I had no lock…! We flip the lock over, and it had a TSA serial. Uh oh… We had no way to open the lock, so at about 3am pacific time, I walked to a gas station to get toothpaste and toothbrush. Too tired to do anything else, I went to bed. I woke up the next morning and went downstairs to get help from the hotel and tried my best to explain and not sound deranged. To my surprise, the staff seemed to have dealt with this before. The lady at the front desk just told me to stand by, and a maintenance guy will swing by my room. When he did, he showed up with a 3ft long bolt cutter. Impressive. With a easy chop and a zing, the lock few off my bag. Hello posters, log books, and clothing. We meet again. Apparently, the TSA founds posters and log books dangerous?
We had to wake up early on the 29th to set up. And to get the booth to look like the picture below was no small feat. Our biggest issue in setup was internet. We had ordered the lowest tier for convention center internet and that was already an arm and a leg (the hotel also had a hacksaw so we took Joe’s appendages for payment). After literally a few hours of troubleshooting we realized we could not share the connection via a router, the credentials we were provided didn’t support such “advanced” technology. This wasn’t clear when we ordered and it wasn’t explained to us when we asked. So after some back and forth with the convention center, we had to fork over another arm and a leg to upgrade our internet connection (poor Joe). The cost of internet ended up being almost half of our booth cost. Big ouch. This ended up being our only gripe though. Once we got past this, the rest of PAX was awesome. It took us pretty much all day to set up our booth. For PAX next year, we will look into designing a more custom booth—airship, anyone?
I want to thank all the sponsors of the Megabooth, especially Intel and Creative Labs. Intel provided every booth at the Indie Megabooth a 42-inch display. They also provided laptops, desktops and peripherals. Incredible generosity! Creative Labs also gave us headsets and speakers that we got to keep. How awesome was that!
After a day worth of work, we were pretty tired, and hungry! It was time to meet the great captain Maximilian Valentine for dinner. We went to this place called Long’s Provincial, and it was delicious. Jesse had called for spring rolls, and this place did not disappoint. Afterwards, we hung out with Jesse at the Whiskey Bar, and met up with his friends at Maker and Alex from Indiestatik. After drinking and chatting merrily about games, drinks, life for an hour or two, I saw on my phone that someone had tagged me on a pic on fb, with just one word, ‘Congratulations!’ What in the world? I didn’t buy any lottery tickets or anything the last time I checked. Out of curiosity, I took a peek, and saw this:
It took me a second or two before I realized what I was seeing. We couldn’t make it to Unite because we had to set up at PAX, and so I joked with Brian Kehrer that if we won the Unity Awards, he would go up and accept it. And this ended up coming true, with a pic on my friend’s wall on Facebook as proof. We were psyched. Best 3D Visual Experience, that’s a big honor. Jesse bought us a round of drinks, which made the moment sweeter 😀 After Whiskey Bar, we went to a bar with tons of pinball machines for more drinks and met up with Markiplier and friends from Maker Studios. A lot of fun, a lot of good stories, but at some point, we had to get some sleep, and get ready for PAX!
One thing cool about being at PAX and the Indie Megabooth is getting to know our booth mates. We were next to Airmech and Dead State, and across the aisle from Dejobaan. Aside from meeting players and promoting the game, the best thing about PAX is meeting, getting to know, and catching up with other indie devs. It’s always fun to trade stories, and it’s a special feeling knowing that a lot of the indie devs share very similar experiences. A lot of times in a conversation, I just nod my head and go, “yep, that horrible thing happened to us as well…”
The days at PAX were as hectic as you’d expect. We rarely had any downtime. It’s always great to have players who already play the game come by. Sometimes, if they have enough time, they would help new players learn the game right there in our booth. Even cooler was when players like Tobias dressed up in full Steampunk gear and hung out with us.
One of the highlights of PAX for us was when father and son duo, Andy and Ben, crewed with us at the booth. We won the match 5-0, and Ben turned out to be a mean Lumberjack gunner! Afterwards, Andy let us know that we were the highlight of Ben’s day at PAX. So awesome. Moments like these really made our PAX worthwhile.
There’s always something happening at night during PAX. The Indie Megabooth hosted a number of awesome parties, connecting indie devs with each other and also with distributors and platforms. Valve, Kickstarter, and Sony all hosted dinners and parties, and it was great meeting old friends and making new ones. At the Valve dinner, I got to hang out quite a bit with the Beatbuddy devs. Beatbuddy is an amazing and gorgeous game. Their lead artist Denis is here in NYC now, and we got to hang out last Friday. We took him to a super spicy ghetto Chinese joint in NYC Chinatown, and hope his stomach found the food agreeable 😀
We’ve been trying to make a tradition out of player and dev dinners, and I’m happy to say that we’ve kept it up over 2 PAX shows now. The dinner we hosted at PAX Prime took place on Saturday, and as the pic below shows, it was bigger than the one at PAX East! Urz came, and Tobias and Jesse brought the entire Steampunk cosplay crew. Awesome.
PAX had a 4 day format this year, and by the afternoon on the last day, we were spent. Our backs, knees, and feet were aching, and we pretty much had no voice left from talking to players and journalists non-stop. Was it all worth it? Heck yeah! PAX is one of the most amazing shows we’ve ever been a part of. We had a blast, and we met so many awesome people who came by. What’s great was that most people who came to our booth didn’t know about Guns of Icarus Online, and they left having a great time. All the compliment and feedback fuel us to keep making the game better, and onward to Adventure Mode!
Oh one more thing. I had to reschedule my flight to a redeye on Tuesday night. Reason? A meeting at Valve. Agenda? Top secret. 😀