Gadgetory

hey everybody so I thought I'd throw together a quick and somewhat informal video about what is it like to go to pax especially from our perspective as media and we go to a lot of these events so just to kind of bring everyone up to speed on what it is we do on almost a daily basis at the site it's it's very travel intensive so right now through this first quarter of the year the travel season is the worst for us in terms of activity it's about every two weeks we're going somewhere so it starts out the year starts with CES consumer electronics show that's in Las Vegas even though it's in Vegas we're not doing any of the stuff that you would expect to be done in Vegas it is entirely work 12 to 14 hours a day things like that so we do that show that's about a full week and almost all the meetings are in suites which is fantastic because from a media perspective it means we're not shouting over crowds and we get very direct sort of targeted looks at the new hardware we can talk to the engineers and get an idea things so that's how CES kind of very top level works then from there we'll normally go to pack south or some other events in the future maybe south by southwest from there about two weeks later we go to another local events two weeks later we start prepping for depending on what time of year it is it'll be PAX East or it'll be e cgc or it'll be dreamhack in this instance this year or any number of other events including gtc and GDC how could I forget there is so basically it's CES into GDC there's about a 12 two-week gap so we fly to San Jose if I back to North Carolina and then one to two weeks later we fly to San Francisco and do the other show fly back to North Carolina couple weeks later two weeks later we'll 52 Boston come back to North Carolina and stay here for about a week and now in a couple days will be going to Dreamhack which is an Austin this year and that's the first or Dreamhack after that it is Taipei and compy tags and China trip to see the factories so very intensive season but let's talk about what it's like to be at PAX East specifically so this one is a bit of a different beast for most these other events because it's not really a media targeted event it's a consumer event that's really cool it gives us a different look at things it means that consumers are the heart of the show if you want to go play games you can certainly do that as a consumer you don't have to have a badge you don't have to be credentialed so that makes it different that also means that it's about 70,000 people for the weekend and it means that if you look at the stats we just published from the the wireless group at the convention center they were seeing 15,000 concurrent users for Saturday concurrent any one second fifteen thousand users just on the wireless alone and I our team that doesn't even connect to the wireless there so there's the plenty of people who aren't tracked as well so you could have upwards of 20,000 people in that place at one time the Boston Convention Center the bcec is a pretty nice convention center its massive you could probably host like a monster truck rally in there if you wanted to it's all indoors basically a giant exaggerated basement and more or less it comes up out of the ground there but so very big there's not a lot of twists and turns like at the PAX Prime Convention Center in Seattle that means it's pretty easy to get around other than the crowds go in there you're basically fighting crowds constantly you've got camera equipment well that good luck because there's no no regard for anybody when people are trying to get to their game to play it but in terms of the media we tend to book medians about back to back every 30 minutes or so i'll do some blocks to our block we call them editorial blocks and that's the time we take when we say okay we know we're talking to AMD and intel at 9am and 930am for instance let me put them back to back so if we talk to them that time we know there's going to be content coming out of those meetings we know that it's going to be fairly high priority for our site and knowing that we'll just say okay well let's take 10 to 12 and produce that content or however long we think it may require that's when Keegan will do all the video production work i'll do the editorial work of patrick stones with us which he normally is he'll help me with research or his own editorial work that's how that works and we'll book back to back and travel from one booth to the next occasionally they're in meeting rooms occasionally they're in a hotel which is again phenomenal if they are but normally it's in the booths and so what happens is here just corralled into this tight very personal space to talk to these people it's difficult to get any sort of is just personal space really and so that makes it hard to film but the harbor vendors are always fantastic they're easy to work with because it's a gaming show so hardware is very important at PAX it's got a huge presence now but certainly if you want to say raffles notwithstanding the MSI booth or the Canton booth it will be less crowded than perhaps the law breakers or the overwatch booth that's just the nature of the show but other than that stuff will work from me nine eight or nine am kind of get up 7am start working get ready go to the show floor nine and this is the fun part that you may not know about and you should know about if you're gonna go to pax east some day because of the semi recent events in Boston a couple years ago security since then has been very heavy to get into the convention center and that means that generally you should look at about a 20 to 30 minute window just to get inside so that's that's not fun of course but once you get through security in the bag check it's it's pretty easy going will work from about nine or ten am all the way through about 5pm I try to finish up kind of early at the show and then we go back to the room and we produce content for until 12 or 2 a.m. or however long it takes to get it all done wake up for four hours later and do it all again so that's kind of the basics more advanced things I suppose if you're going as a consumer I there's all these panels they're really cool so if you like to sort of see industry icons or if you have very specific things in the games industry you're interested in whether that's social issues in gaming or if you want more fun things like just sort of stupid stuff that happened during the development of X game or you want to see gabe and tycho of course the the Creator is a penny arcade you want to see them compete playing overwatch there's all that stuff to which we don't really cover a lot of that these days just because it takes a lot of time the panel's if you want to go to one I would very strongly suggest showing up probably if it's a popular one maybe about an hour in advance for example the which panels always well there is one with alan tudyk this year who of course is known for playing wash and Fire I he was there that panel is one where you want to show up an hour in advance because they do fill up the room and you won't get in once it's full that's just it so definitely 30 minutes to an hour minimum to make sure you get in bring something this is something that I haven't thought of in a long time because i haven't been an attendee in a very long time six years yes but as media we don't think a lot of things that attendees need to think about so one thing as an attendee you have a lot of downtime because you're waiting in lines to go to panels or to go to play a game or whatever i would suggest bringing something like zombie dice or some simple game you can only buy really simple games there drop 10 or 15 bucks and make a friend on the line play it on the floor I've done that I did that with magic many years ago when I was actually waiting in lines and when I say actually waiting in line so it's not sort of a that's not a like look where media we can cut the line it's not how it works at pax so that is maybe how it works at some conventions GDC certainly and it's for good reason you know we've got back-to-back meetings they got back-to-back meetings we're both trying to do our jobs so it makes sense but at at pax it is still consumer targeted so to get ahead of the line means we booked ahead of time we booked a special meeting show up with other media and then we all play the game together do a brawl and everyone goes about their their job so it's maybe 10 to 20 minutes to play the game or less in some cases talk to the dubs get out of there and write the content and that is chaotic in many other ways because we're all competing with each other but as an attendee definitely keep in mind though the line times and there's some other pretty cool stuff here in cosplay is cool if you do that or if you want to take photos of it it's great place to practice photography if you are into tabletop games there's a lot of that there one cool place to visit if you ever go to pax is the bring your own computer BYOC so they have this whole normally intel or i buy or cybertron was the sponsor this year they'll normally sponsor these free to play free play excuse me computer areas so you go stand in line you get in you get put on a computer you stay however long you want or until they kick you out you can play the games that are there you can log into your own account play your own games but either way there's a area next to it called the BYOC area you know popular Atlanta vents like Dreamhack and you bring your system every now and then there are some really cool case mods and so Bob Stewart has made some dingo he's another modder he's made some Falcone Charlie Falcone dingo and then rod Rosenberg which works with Bob all these pretty well-known people modders who do awesome case mods and they'll bring that stuff this couple others as well so you can walk up to the BYOC area and say do you mind if I get an escort to walk around and take a look and they'll be happy to do that for you so that is done by enforcers enforcers only wear red or blue shirts and they are volunteers they do it completely for free that work six or eight hour shifts and the exchange is basically penny arcade says you know you work the show for us and we'll give you free passes and then you can play around for one or two days or however long it may be I don't know the exact details but those are the enforcers they're kind of the peacekeepers they make sure everyone Corral's into the booth rather than standing in the aisle but Harbor presence has grown a lot to lately AMD was there for the first time this year I haven't seen them there before at PAX East era packed South this your first time Intel is always there Nvidia pretty much always there this year they skipped the show floor they did an event outside and that's another thing to know is if you're interested in external events like the star citizen team almost always does one this year they're keeping their heads down because they're trying to finish squadron 42 but they almost always do an event just outside of a convention summer pax any of them and the same is true and video ho it's their party twitch host their party we don't go to these party events i I mean certainly if anyone on my team wanted to I would let them if they wanted to get a break from working on content to go to do that but personally and currently everyone on the team we all feel the same that it's just and I hope the vendors if any manufacturers are watching don't take this the wrong way but we feel like the giant waste of time we'd rather work on the content and then sleep then go out to some event and not really do anything productive now of course there's the whole shaking hands saying but that's really not what we're in this for and this to make cool content about cool stuff so that is what we like spending our time on but certainly you can go to the parties if you wanted to I think twitches with us it was at a bowling alley this year so very quick and formal unscripted you know this is what pax is like from a top level perspective if you ever go as an attendee it is a heck of a lot of fun but we don't really have that perspective anymore actually been there as media and the only main difference is when you're there as media you're there to to really work and it's it's hard work if you're if you're in media and you're maybe a smaller blog or whatever you know we've been doing this I've been running the site since 2008 it was a sight before was a YouTube channel sites still larger than the YouTube channel and the the thing to know is you don't just show up and expect to write one post recapping the day you gotta write up every single meeting you go to and then look for cool stuff to discover while you're there I love going to the well I guess I don't do it so much personally anymore because I'm managing from a top o but if Patrick or keygen or anyone else with us has a spare time I'll tell them you know I got nothing for you for the next two hours go have fun go check out the indie mega booth if you want to play games great enjoy yourself but if you want to help the site make content then certainly I'm good with that so go explore and discover something that's really cool come back and we'll report on it so we did that with majors of mr. alia we did that with seven did that with a couple other games than previous years and you can find some really cool stuff down there on the show floor that is not necessarily known just because the nature of being in D they don't have a huge marketing budget so pretty cool stuff but anyway I might do one of these more condensed for future events probably do one for CES or computech certainly would be cool we'll be checking out some of the big giant technology models at computex or not I computex put in Taipei and Shenzhen so that'll be fun content but as always patreon link commercial video if you wanna help us out directly these efforts are constant antics it's very expensive I I'll just drop a quick number we we normally will spend 3 plus grand for an event and that's obviously as media you spend a bit less as a consumer if you're just going alone and maybe staying in a room with a group of friends but from a business side we're paying for I personally will pay for everyone's flight or i should say the company will pay for everyone's flight which is owned by me but so that's several grand just to do that alone and then that the show itself is getting the rooms or several grand getting the calves a couple hundred bucks and only for the whole thing and food couple hundred bucks i'm paying for the team obviously not just myself so money is a big thing in it and probably not something a lot of people think about but as i said a second ago we'll do something more in depth on that in the future just because it's kind of interesting discussion i think for anyone who either trying to get into the industry or just curious about how the industry works behind the scenes but thank you for watching as always subscribe more content patreon link patrol video i'll see you all next time