Aussie adventure in gaming
We continue our series on popular culture conventions with PAX Australia.
THIS POP-con took us Down Under to PAX Australia held in Melbourne from Nov 4 to 6. PAX itself hails from Seattle, United States, with rather unconventional origins: When the first convention was launched in 2004 it was known as Penny Arcade Expo, an offshoot of the Penny Arcade webcomic about video games and gamer culture. At that time, the creators of Penny
Arcade, Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik, could not find an event exclusively for video gaming so they decided to organise one themselves.
This first convention drew 3,300 people, and the event grew rapidly, drawing over 70,000 in 2011. Now identified as PAX West, additional conventions are being held annually with PAX East in Boston, Massachusetts, for gamers from north-east America, and PAX South in San Antonio, Texas, serving the southern American states.
The only edition currently outside US is PAX Australia, first held in July 2013 at the Melbourne Showgrounds. It has since migrated to the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre with better facilities spanning 30,000sq m of expo floor space plus six theatres for concerts, panels and activities in this year’s incarnation.
Digital games
The Expo Hall was filled with major video game brands the likes of Playstation, Xbox, Nintendo, Alienware, Bandai Namco, and Ubisoft.
This year, almost every vendor was showcasing products linked to virtual reality (VR) gameplay. Along with all manner of VR games from first-person-shooters to sports racing comes all manner of handheld controllers and peripherals. During a panel discussion on the “Future Of Pc Gaming”, luminaries from the tech field said that this is just the beginning of home VR with too many products currently being launched. Through failure of the less viable ones, we should look forward to a narrower and better field of VR headsets and types of controllers as the market matures.
Part of the Expo Hall was designated PAX Rising for independent game developers from Australia and New Zealand. Among these, six of the very best were highlighted as part of the Indie Showcase, including Mini Metro, an iOS simulation game to design a subway for a growing city.
Another corner of the Expo Hall featured the PAX Arena hosting a weekend of intense e-sports. Tournaments were held for Rocket League, Call Of Duty: Infinite Warfare, The Elder Scrolls: Legends and culminating with the ESL Counter-Strike: Global Offensive AU & NZ Championship Finals.
Team Athletico was victorious, claiming the championship for the second year running and scoring prize money of A$10,000 (RM33,000).
Analog games
Stepping out of the Expo Hall into the Tabletop section located in the southern half of the exhibition centre, we transitioned from digital to nonelectronic gaming. These included card games, board games, role-playing games, miniature wargames, etc, which are now dubbed “analog gaming” in geek culture-speak.
The Tabletop section was sponsored by Magic: The Gathering, the world’s most popular trading card game owned by Hasbro. Attendees yet to experience Magic had the opportunity to be inducted via game demonstrations using cards from the latest thematic setting of Kaladesh. Those completing the demonstration games and other side activities received a beginners set of playable cards and a souvenir tumbler.
Retailers were out in force here, offering the latest tabletop games as well as classic bestsellers like Settlers Of Catan and its many expansions and variants. Some local publishers were also present, such as Final War, a homegrown Australian trading card game launched at PAX. The game was developed in Sydney over seven years, inspired by the game designer’s Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game campaign. The new game was sold at a special convention price with free promo game cards given out.
Talkin’ about gaming culture
Panels and presentations were conducted over all three days of the convention, covering a wide assortment of topics related to digital gaming and geek culture, such as “Pushing Limits: Overclocking Beyond 8 GHz”, “VR: From Mystery To Mainstream”, “Cultivating Safe & Inclusive Nerd Spaces”, and “How Geekery Saved My Life And Made Me Who I Am”. Panellists included executives from Microsoft, Alienware and Weta Workshop, academics from Australian institutes of higher learning, game journalists, and social media influencers.
At a panel about “The Past, Present And Future Of Escape Rooms”, panellists shared that game experiences vary vastly across the world.
The general mechanics of Escape Room involve locking up a team of players in a thematic room to solve an assortment of puzzles to “escape” within a predetermined time. For Australian players, a good Escape Room is all about the thematic experience shared among