PAX East: Post-Mortem

My trip to Boston for PAX East is officially complete. As I’m writing this, my train home has just left the Boston South Station and I’m locked in for the next several hours. It’s sad to see the good times go, but with some hard work and maybe a little bit of luck, I’ll be back at PAX next year with something cool to show off.

For those unaware, post-mortems are a sort of tool used in the games industry to reflect on a project after its completion. Oftentimes they’re given in the form of talks at trade shows like GDC or PAX, but today I wanted to sort of do a post-mortem in this blog post about my time at PAX. This isn’t my first time traveling alone, but it’s my first time traveling alone; that being, going somewhere completely by myself without the intent to visit someone at the end destination. It was honestly surprisingly nerve-wracking for me, even up to this morning getting back on the train. Before this trip, the only time I had ridden a train was before I could even completely remember the trip, so there was a lot of anxiety around making sure I was in the right place at the right time as to not miss my train. Luckily, I can now say I managed it correctly both ways. There was also a little bit of hotel anxiety, since like I said before, I’ve never gone somewhere completely by myself before. During my time in Boston I was constantly checking my pocket to make sure I had my hotel key with me, since if I lost it, I’d probably have to go through the embarrassing process of going up to the reception desk and explaining that fact. But now, the good parts of traveling. I really love being in the city. Being able to just walk anywhere I want to go is somehow more freeing than being able to drive. That plus the fact that walking everywhere is a nice form of incidental exercise (my legs are delightfully sore from this week) makes the whole experience so much more enjoyable. Half the days, I didn’t even bother with the shuttle bus, opting to simply walk to and from the convention center.

On the networking front, this honestly went better than I expected. In retrospect, the amount of business cards I made was a little overkill, but I’m honestly surprised with the amount I did hand out. I think I have to attribute that in no small part to the couple of guys who came up and talked to me before the MatPat panel on day 1. That interaction alone really lead me to realize that everyone here is a massive nerd, everyone here wants to talk about games, and no one will think I’m being weird for doing so with them. So if you two are reading this, thanks for that, I really needed it. If memory serves, I think I gave out somewhere in the realm of 15-20 business cards to various exhibitors and panelists over the course of the convention, each of which took them gladly. So for all of you who indulged me, thank you as well. I realize that my portfolio is in serious need of improvement on the projects side, but I’m hoping that over the next year or so, this new project will be my new best project. These people I talked to all also gave me great advice for how I can improve my portfolio in other ways than just projects. My conversation with Amanda Grow in particular gave me the idea to add a new page to my website where I can write more professional and deliberate essays. This would allow me to display my ability to break down and understand various games that would be unfeasible to demonstrate in the form of a project, such as an ARPG or MMORPG. These essays would be more involved projects than my simple off-the-top-of-the-head blog posts from this page, but are also much shorter than a full on game project and take up a different facility of my brain, so wouldn’t detract from my game projects either. Overall, I think networking was a massive success over what I was expecting myself to be capable of. In the coming days, I’ll definitely be watching the analytics of my website to see if I get some new views from some of the countries and states the people I handed my cards to are from.

Finally, on the fun front, I have to say this was a pretty massive success too. I got to see MatPat, Brian David Gilbert, and Ify Nwadiwe in person, also getting to meet Brian and Ify after their panel. I got to play several cool new games as well as directly talk to the developers of those games, picking their mind and discussing game design with them for fun. I watched the Almost Pro Tekken 8 Open for a few rounds whenever I walked passed the PAX Arena and saw some incredibly close rounds between some of the players. Lastly but certainly not least, the expo floor inspired me not only for a new game project I’ve started working on (stay tuned for a post about that soon), but also inspired me to want to exhibit said game project next year at PAX East 2025.

Now, if you’ve been reading all my PAX blog posts, you might remember that on day 0 I was watching a show on the way up to Boston called Re: ZERO. I can proudly say I have now managed to catch up with the two seasons of content that is out so far, and I think I watched this show at the perfect time in my life. At this point, I’ve been trying to make my mark in the game design world for well over a year, and it’s no secret that doing this for so long with not much to show for it can be very disheartening. I’ll readily admit there have been times where I’ve considered giving up on my dream, as sad as that is. However, going to PAX, along with this show, has completely reinvigorated my drive to succeed against the odds. There’s a scene near the end of the first season where the main character Subaru has almost completely given up on trying to protect what he loves, going into a long monologue about how he wants to give up because he’s useless and hates himself. This monologue is followed up by a very simple quote from one of the supporting characters: “Giving up is easy, but it doesn’t suit you at all.” That one line really resonated with me in a way I can’t really explain very well, and even as I’m writing this I’m trying to hold back the emotions that line invokes from spilling out right here on the train.

For all those reading, from PAX or otherwise, thanks for joining me on my journey, and stay tuned for what’s coming next!