PAX East 2020

On the eve of the Covid-19 Pandemic, with the stock market tumbling, hundreds (thousands?) of game fans breezed into a convention center to try some new stuff, purchase apparel, and frequently use hand sanitizer. It was everywhere.

Image
There’s something sinister about the rise of Discord, but I can’t explain why yet

Thursday was far better than Saturday, so definitely go then if you can. I was able to play far more games, and the boardgame tables where much easier to navigate.

Exciting New Games

While speaking to the creator of BlazeSky, I name-checked Escape Velocity and he knew what I was talking about. But the more I look at it, the more it looks like Empty Epsilon/Artemis. The different styles of play (rescuing people, combat, exploration, etc) are represented by different characters who give you quests, which is a neat approach to writing storylines. I found the banking camera made it difficult to reason about where my shots where going, and I hope that at launch there’s an option to keep the camera steady while the ship turns, but even if there isn’t I’ll probably play the hell out of it.

Another game that was physically demanding just due to its camera was Sludge Life. After you fight through its extremely elaborate recreation of a 90s desktop interface you’re dropped in a colorful, heavily distorted 3d environment. Very Getter: Headsplitter. The distortion (I think the vertical FOV was unusually high or low or whatever) was jarring and slightly dizzying. I predict that this game will be a stoner-hit of Rez proportions. Devolver is playing in the same space as Adult Swim here.

Watched some people play Dunk Lords. The world is ready for strawberry-headed athletes. You could dismiss it as Space Jam: The Videogame but stripped of its bizzare branding, the concept of cartoony basketball feels pretty novel. Sports games that attempt to simulate a sport (like EA’s catalog) or Be a sport (like Rocket League) aren’t my jam, but using the basic rules of a sport to do something unique or new definitely is.

Watched some Panzer Paladin play. There was an enormous reproduction of the cover art, standing out against the crowd. Makes me wonder what the differentiator is. It looks like a Gameboy Advance game (specifically, it looked like Metroid) to me, and though the mechanics where cool and smooth, I wonder who’s buying enough copies of this to justify an enormous booth at PAX. What’s the differentiator. Are they just striking at the right moment? Is it the great Anime art? Am I not enough of a sidescroller fan to understand what the difference between it and AVGN Adventure (which we also demo’d) is.

A radically different sidescroller with very clear differentiation was Carrion, a game where the avatar resembles the blob monster from The Thing. I’m not sure what the gameplay is besides sliding and swinging around an industrial environment and eating (?) the little NPCs that run from you.

If you’re itching to play Star Citizen but don’t like social interaction or having to hire an entire clan to operate your large spaceship or pass flight training to join an org, and also want a game that’s finished, I unfortunately can’t recommend Everspace II yet, because it isn’t finished either. But what I did play compared favorably to Star Citizen, and I venture to say that it’ll be done far sooner. The vision of space was colorful and dense with things to explore and tractor beam into your ship.

I also got a chance to demo Brigador Killers. In addition to the stompy robots seen in Brigador, you get to play as an infantry suit or a giant floating wrecking ball. The controls are also slightly different – rather than absolute direction, your WASD controls are now relative to the mouse. It took some getting used to, especially with the wrecking ball.

Parting Thoughts

Check out the screen attached to this expensive of a gaming PC. I’m not sure words will do it justice, but if you’ve been here, you know.

Image
The dreaded launcher update.

I also demo’d a Cookie Clicker clone which I won’t name to protect the guilty. It pitched itself as being about the development of life from molecules to technological singularity. However, in reality it is a cookie clicker clone, the meta of a game (buy stuff on a tech tree to augment your abilities) without the actual gameplay (you score by just tapping the screen. Anywhere on the screen. I wondered again what the filter was between successful games and trivial games. Was presence at PAX a marker of success or a desperate gambit? I told myself I was done with the game, but then I reached down to the tablet and tapped it a few more times.

Unrelated image of a book that was on sale at the convention

Best Episodes of Reply All

Reply All is an excellent podcast, but it can be hard to figure out what a given episode is going to be about, because the descriptions often have nothing to do with the episodes themselves. These are my favorite episodes and a quick take on each, which hopefully serve to explain what you’re getting into if you want to listen to them.

Boy In Photo

Perhaps the quintessential episode of Reply All, this investigates an internet community’s obsession, and bridges the gap between online shenanigans and real, meatspace people.

The Takeover

Classic hobby drama in podcast form. While just a story about someone’s facebook, it’s also a microcosm of human organization. This story represents a well-known failure mode for online communities. Behold the eternal September.

At World’s End

This episode features the illustrious DanC, which alone is enough to earn a place in this list. It’s also insight into the world of Flash games and what it was like to have a piece of yourself tied up in something that is both ephemeral and engaging. If you’ve ever tracked down something that you remembered from a long time ago, this will be a fascinating story for you.

The Case of the Phantom Caller

This one is about solving a telephonic mystery. The chase is as exciting as the reveal. If you’re interested in Phone Phreaking or enjoyed Exploding the Phone (or read any textfiles.com) then this will be an enjoyable episode. It also presses a bunch of ARG/Creepypasta/Internet Mystery buttons as well.

An Ad for the worst day of your life

A fairly deep exploration of internet Chum Boxes (the often disgusting ads that appear under articles) including where the content comes from.

The Man in the FBI hat

Reply All’s take on the BBS world, or: the story of an enigmatic ISP founder and the vast gulf between his double lives.

Long Distance and Long Distance, Part II

In this episode, the hosts go above and beyond to track down a phone scammer. Serious journalism is on display here. Not to give anything away, but I’m not exactly sure how they funded this endeavor, but I’m glad that they did.

Worldstar

Worldstar Hip Hop is an important site from the perspective of public freakout material, to the point where some freakout videos are punctuated by onlookers yelling “worldstar!” at the videographer. This episode touches on the cultural impact, but is mostly about the founder.

Friends and Blasphemers

A mini documentary about LiveJournal, how it was used in the early days, and how its usage changed with the years.