PAX East: Day 4
Today, on this final day of PAX, I decided to take it easy. Being the final day, the population was definitely reduced at the convention center compared to Friday and Saturday. This plus the fact that the show is only open until 6 today meant I was going to make this day my chill day. Up until this point, I hadn’t bought anything from any of the booths, so I decided to do that. My purchases amounted to 3 things: A shirt, a game, and a desk mat. Firstly, I bought a shirt from the PAX merch table at the front of the convention hall. Even though I did get a shirt with my badge, I wanted to pick up a second shirt while at the convention. I ended up going with the shirt that depicted several years worth of PAX logos in one mashup.
Secondly I bought a game. Now, if you know me, you know that I like my big, intricate, complicated board games that cost upwards of $100 and will take 4 hours to play. I’m happy to report that this is not the kind of game I purchased. The game I bought is called Trios, and I only learned about it because one of the booths was running a demo for it and needed 1 more person to play. Basically, the game consists of 36 cards, 3 of each number from 1 to 12. Each player gets an even number of these cards, while the rest are put face down on the table in a sort of grid pattern. Your objective is to make 3 matching sets of 3. The catch is that you can only operate within the highest and lowest numbered cards anyone has. On your turn, you may ask players to reveal either their highest or lowest card, or flip over a card on the table. As long as all the cards revealed on your turn are matching, you may keep taking actions. If you reveal enough cards to make a set, you can put them all in front of you, even if these cards were revealed entirely from other peoples’ hands. If 2 cards don’t match however, your turn is over. The game becomes a sort of memory game, remembering who revealed what cards and trying to make your trios before the rest of the players.
Lastly, I bought a desk mat. Obviously, as a game designer, and just as a gamer in general, I spend a lot of time on my computer. I’ve wanted to get a desk mat for a long time, to help with my wrists getting tired or numb after extended use. Today was that day. One of the booths in the expo hall was selling desk mats of various sizes, all with original art from their independent studio. The designs on these desk mats captivated me and I frankly had a really hard time choosing which to get. In the end, I got one of a sort of space theme, and the guy who made the art for it even signed it for me.
Once I was done shopping, I figured I’d simply head back to the hotel today and take a break from walking around so much. However, in order to leave the expo hall, I had to walk passed the Path of Exile 2 booth. I noticed one of the guys I overheard was a developer on the game sitting at a desk at the front of the booth and had the idea to talk to him and see if I could prod his mind for advice on how to get into the industry. Luckily, he was very receptive to talking and shared some great advice with me that reassured that my current plans are probably pretty close to optimal. He told me he doesn’t have very much experience with portfolios, as he got into Grinding Gear Games through streaming on Twitch, but he told me that generally the best idea is to enter the game company at a different point, such as programming or quality assurance, then shift positions from there. Additionally, he also said that if I had a particular game or company I wanted to work for, making supplementary content for those games such as mods and external programs is a good way to catch their eye. When I was done talking with him, he gladly took my card and I left the convention center for the last time (this year). On my walk back to the hotel, I was talking to one of my friends about it, sort of half-bragging about getting to talk to a developer at Grinding Gear Games, and mentioning he used to stream. My friend then, almost as a joke, grabbed a screenshot of the face cam of a streamer he knew became a dev at Grinding Gear and asked if it was him. It was indeed him, and I was surprised to find that this man also has a fairly decent following on Twitch under the username of Octavian0. Pretty cool to find out this guy that I talked to not only works for a company I really like but also has that Twitch following.
While this was the final day at PAX this year, I plan to write a sort of post-mortem post tomorrow while I’m on the train, recounting my whole experience at PAX this year, what I think went well, what didn’t go well, and my future plans in the wake of this experience. Stay tuned for that!
