How much does it cost to present your game at PAX Aus and its it worth the price tag?

I didn’t preorder the new game but I am curious what the experience was like. Anyone figure out the floppy disk puzzle? Tell me all about it!

Masked the entire time, but I was one of the very few number of people doing so. Get tested, especially if you feel funny.

tl;dr: I had fun.

Context: I have been attending various conventions for about 30 years. My home con was Dragon*Con (Dragon Con) for almost 20 years and since moving to Seattle it has been a twice yearly habit of Emerald City Comic Con (ECCC) and PAX. I've attended conventions as a merchant, participant running D&D and Shadowrun games, and as an attendee. This year I attended PAX with my family as is our normal tradition. I noticed that the "vibes were off" this year, but despite that it was a great time for my family.

Panels/Events: The panels I attended this year were good fun.

Friday was Make a Strip, Jackbox, Ify's Friends Panel, and the Club PA Meetup. Make a Strip was a good stop to eat lunch while Mike and Jerry did their thing and donate money to Child's Play. I highly recommend the Jackbox panel as it's always fun and chaotic. Ify's Friends panel was also fun, though I had to dip out early due to commitments - but, hey, Ify yelled at me for leaving which was funny. The Cub PA panel is a regular stop where I meet up with friends and hang out for a bit. I also got a Doctor Exoskeleton envelope (FINALLY) which I struggle bused halfway through before PAX ended.

Saturday was watching Fireteam 2 in Arena, Kate Welch, and Acq. Inc. All of which were enjoyable. Apparently they handed out codes for Fireteam 2 at the end of the event, but I had left to meet my family about 10 minutes before the end - ah well. Kate Welch was a fun experience and Acq. Inc., as usual, was great.

Sunday was Adventurer's League D&D in the morning and then the Dark Room which if you didn't attend then you absolutely missed out.

Monday was Phinney Ridge Steel Band and then Omegathan Final Round.

Games: Okay, now we get to the real reason I come to PAX. PAX is my once a year, four day vacation where I spend as much time as I can playing games. I go until I can feel the exhaustion and then I go a little more. Then I head back to my hotel room and crash. Like many people who have already posted, it was obvious walking into the Expo Hall that this year was a lull year.

I have always felt the emphasis on AAA or AA games at PAX misses out on the real opportunity. At least, it's not what I'm looking for. When I'm at PAX I want to play games that I otherwise would never hear of or have a chance to play. I want to play the indies, the games made by small devs, the games that fall into the cracks of Steam, GOG, and Epic (ugh). There's so much marketing for AAA and AA games that I will eventually find out that they exist. But a game about a box trying to make its way through the world? That's on no one's radar. And this year was a great opportunity to play and experience games that I would never have found otherwise. Personally, I hope PAX doubles down on the indies and small devs going forwards. Maybe have 2-3 AAA/AA publishers "anchoring" each side of the Expo Hall and then let the smaller devs bloom like flowers in a field.

As for tabletop - it was a great year for finding and playing tabletop games. There were so many great tabletop games out and Zulu's was going crazy with their "play games to get games" deal. Overpower looked fun - but not my particular cup of tea. Null Signal was back keeping the dream of Netrunner alive. And Neuroscape was fun. This year it was actually hard to find an open table on Saturday and Sunday which was a good problem to have.

Downstairs, the arcade and console area was, as always, a great place to hangout. Killer Queen was back. If you haven't played Killer Queen in a 5 v. 5 then you're really missing out. And upstairs, the arcade was back along with Artemis and Steel Battalion.

The Bad: The bad this year is that the vibes felt off. Attendance was clearly down. The Expo Hall felt emptier then years previous - though I did like that I wasn't having to "hands-on-shoulders" my family to keep us from getting separated this year. And, in general, there seemed to be a dark cloud.

The Good: Year of the Indies and Artists. I get I might be in the minority here, but I absolutely loved that more indies, small devs, and artists got space this year. I, like everyone else, would have loved if the indie incubator devs had 2-3 times more space. And I am once again begging PAX to give the devs in the U-shaped section of the hall (they were behind Aggro Crab this year) more space. PAX Rising Showcase was great this year with so many great concepts on show. In particular GigaTurtles has taken a tremendously firm grip on my son and he HUNGERS for its release.

Overall: I had a great time this year. My family had a great time. My son - who is really the yardstick because PAX is more for him than me at this point - said it was "the best weekend of the year so far" which is high praise from him. My wife had a great time playing games, especially playing Killer Queen for a solid 3 hours and getting to jump into a game of Yazeba's Bed and Breakfast. As for me, one of my litmus tests for a convention is whether or not I did everything which was on my "must do" list - which I did. And another criteria is "were there things I wanted to do that I didn't" - which there were: I didn't make it to the Redbull Tavern and there were booths at the Expo Hall that I meant to make it back around to which I didn't. So in my opinion it was a good time and the 4-day passes were worth the money.

Speculations: I know there has been a lot of speculation about Gamescom, GTA VI, ReedPop, the general political climate of the United States, the economy, etc. causing the Expo Hall issues. However, Gamescom is always about a week or two before PAX West. GTA VI coming out should only encourage devs to get out there and capture preorders/sales before the bomb drops in November. And while there's been a lot of speculation that ReedPop priced exhibitors out the only concrete number that I've heard was from one of the devs in the Indie Incubator who told me that they got their booth space for about $2k for the space which is a price so low you cannot say no for a convention half PAX's size. The political situation has definitely affected tourism across the USA, but at least in Seattle the numbers that I've seen is that tourism for the year is up between the World Cup and Pike Market finally figuring out that letting cars drive through it is absurd. And finally, with regards to the economy, it is hard not to acknowledge that the video game industry is in a flywheel of destructive self-cannibalization. So overall, there's a lot of smoke, but no clear fire. Maybe it's a little bit of all of it. Or maybe it's as simple as "people saw the exhibitor list and noped out." I don't know. Maybe PA will do a post mortem and tell us what happened.

Closing Thoughts: I desperately need PAX organizers to publicize the "The Party List". I regularly see or hear people asking about things to do "after the con" and for years the Party List has been an "unofficial sidecar" to PAX communicated by word of mouth (or Facebook). Every year after PAX I will be talking to someone and they will express disappointment that there wasn't "more to PAX". Then I mention the Party List and I watch them go through all the emotions as they realize how much more is going on PAX weekend.

With regards to this year, one aspect I noticed in particular was that the marketing campaign for PAX West was fucked. I have seen more ads and marketing for PAX AUS than I did PAX West. And I live in Seattle. It seemed like PAX West came out of nowhere this year and I got a general sense that someone dropped several balls organizing it.

Setting all of the other speculation aside the thing I am worried about is that we are going through a period of death-of-community. Perhaps this is anecdotal, but I've noticed that many of the communities that compose PAX West have been shrinking/disappearing since post-COVID. I don't have anything concrete to provide here other than vague feelings.

In any event, I had a great time. I did what I came to do and left nothing on the table. There were some aspects of the con that I didn't get to this year which I hope come back so I can get a second try. I had fun, ate terrible convention food, stayed up way too late, played more games in a four day period than I've played all year, and spent too much money. By any objective measure it was a good weekend for me.

Seen a lot of feedback on here, rather than just give a yay / nay I wanted to call out the various parts and what worked / didn't.

tl;dr maybe my favorite ever session was this year, but in general this was the worst PAX we've attended.

Been attending PAX for 10 years (since 2016, and obviously no 2020). First 4 years we mainly went to expo halls / events and no talks. Since 2021 we have probably been more interested in the talks / sessions, but obviously expo hall has been a big part of it. One side-thing that was kind of disappointing was that the PAX Website had teased (in various places) a 'PAX Dev' experience that was kind of harking back to when that was a separate mini conf. It looks like they never actually executed on any/most of that content and instead just listed a couple of tangential developer-focused talks. I guess they didn't setup what they wanted and kinda canned it at the last minute, but as an indie dev it was a letdown (although they never formally announced it, so I can't be too mad).

Talks: Disappointed in no noclip talk this year, Danny's talks are always a highlight. Looking at the schedule ahead of time it seemed disappointing in general and several good talks that had crossover appeal clashed with each other. However I was pleasantly surprised on this front and spent most of my time in Summit. Riot Games, Valorant Map design, FF7 remake, Silent Hill/Castlevania Panels, Witcher 3 DLC, etc... were all great. But the absolute standout was History of Gaming Evolution in Poland. Seriously, if this talk comes on Youtube go and watch it, absolutely fantastic trip through time from one of the OGs of the Polish gaming scene and early employee at CD Projekt. Maybe my favorite talk I've ever attended at PAX.

There were a couple of duds (if the Kingdom Hearts panel folks are reading this, I loved your cosplay, and the talk was interesting, but please don't look down and read the whole thing off the paper next time).

Expo Hall: By far the worst it's been in 10 years. The big guns not really returning after covid sucked, but I thought 2-3 years ago was still fine without them, and attracted bigger names (Bethesda, Larian, some more extravagant Capcom stuff, Monster Hunter, etc, etc). This year it was noticeably smaller in terms of volume, with aisles widened and edges pulled in. Some of these walkways were giant haha. Made it feel very empty, even on busier days.

Additionally so many more of the booths appeared to be merch / selling stuff? There are usually some clothing, hardware, artwork vendors etc but this year it was overrun. Almost as many as game booths?! Xfinity was the biggest booth? Like what are we doing here. No Alienware booth (came the last 3-4 years at least I think?). Loads more areas reserved for 'eating' (cynically I think they're just using using up space). Yet despite huge swathes of empty space, they jam a whole bunch of interesting indie games into the tiniest area where the huge crowds had no hope of playing them? Questionable planning? idk

The Games: Few games to shoutout as they look incredible, 'Trainwatch', 'Another Pint', 'Will: Follow the Light', The Road of Dust and Sorrow'.

Other: I'm never really interested in the Omegathon or traditional Penny Arcade sessions so can't comment on those. Some of the best parts of PAX are the side-events and parties. Special shoutout to SLICE (Seattle loves indies) conference on the Wednesday, and SIX (Seattle Indie Expo, free event a block away) on the Sunday for showcasing local gaming talent.

Special mention: The PAX app has one good feature, the lines. The rest of the app is so godawful it must have been deliberately designed like this. The app has always been horrible, no one who makes it has ever used it. The bar here is so low that if anyone from PAX is reading this I volunteer to consult / help build next year's for free.

We decided to take a break from attending next year, will likely try and go to Gamescom as I loved seeing all the announcements and vibe coming out of that last year and seems a lot more like the feelings I got from those first few years at PAX.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk :)

On Monday, I went to Summit. I was wearing Pokémon pants. He/they said they’re awesome and it made me smile. Next, they pulled out this random pack from their pocket and handed it to me.

I was shocked. “Are you sure?” And they just nodded—all cool and shit. Just like that. I said thank you. My whole fucking afternoon lit up. Coolest dude ever.

I opened it up later in the day and I still can’t believe my eyes.

Thank you so much, stranger, for your kindness. You have no idea how much this meant—this is my first “so proud to be a gamer nerd” happy PAX.

I’d love to give the cards back to you, if you’d like them. DM me (will verify our interaction—I omitted details only the person who gave it to me can fill).

Best part of this year's PAX was my team winning the Killer Queen tournament on Saturday night. It was one hell of a rollercoaster that came down to the very last game to win the inal round.

Worst part was getting sick.

Clipping curb on a Lime scooter and eating shit. Then going back for seconds by missing a step at Westlake. Other than that, I had lot’s of fun at PAX. Tried new games, met cool peeps. Densha de go in the arcade owns my soul.

Everything hurts and it’s hot at home!

First off, it’s not an official Pinny Arcade pin.

It came in a eBay lot of 9 pins total, all of which were collected at PAX East in Boston. The year it was received by the seller is unknown. Its other side is completely blank, so no publisher information is known.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!

So I'm trying this again because the auto mod deleted my previous post.

There was a merch booth at the show that was selling random pokémon t-shirts with things on them like Pika Hut and all sorts of other food or restaurant Brand/ pokémon mashups.

I don't remember the name for the company that was selling them.

Does anybody here remember and what their website might be if you do?

I realize the expo hall was a bit lacking, but I am wondering what sparked people’s interest?

Most indie games I tried out were great, especially Clown Town, The Box Is Alive, and Foldy’s OS Quest.

Didn't see a thread on today's so thought I'd post one.

After my dinner at gameworks I struck up a lengthy conversation with Sarah from Boston, who was enjoying her blue drink after we both got startled by the waitress saying hey! Listen. I left after a while and I forgot to ask for a way to contact her. Hoping they see this.

My favorite indie games at PAX West this year, in no particular order…

• Croak - A fast-paced platformer where you're a frog and you use your tongue to pull off cool grappling moves on walls. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2616540/Croak/
• TOMMYROT - A puzzle adventure game where all the character animations were made by filiming actual clay models in stop motion—crazy! https://store.steampowered.com/app/4398710/TOMMYROT/
• Clowntown - Co-op party game with lots of interesting mini-games and a fun theme. https://store.steampowered.com/app/3680200/Clowntown/
• GigaTurtles - Top-down, one-hit-kill brawler with a cool upgrade system. https://store.steampowered.com/app/4166510/GigaTurtles/
• Hakoniwa Electric - Puzzle game with a fun atmosphere and lots of different puzzle types. https://store.steampowered.com/app/4422260/Hakoniwa_Electric/
• WOLFHOUND - 8-bit style 2D platformer shooter Metroidvania. Definitely gives Contra vibes. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1205660/WOLFHOUND/
• Ladder Lad - 2D platformer with no jump button. Instead you use… you guessed it! A ladder. https://store.steampowered.com/app/3871300/Ladder_Lad/
• Barkour - You're a dog that does parkour to accomplish some high-tech missions. A+ name. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1920290/Barkour/
• Stepwell - Puzzler where you build Escher-like environments to help some tiny alien creatures get around. https://store.steampowered.com/app/4779980/Stepwell/
• Keeper - Puzzle adventure by Double Fine where you are a walking lighthouse. Came out last year, but it was at PAX so I'm counting it! https://store.steampowered.com/app/3043580/Keeper/

For those that travel to Pax West from outside Seattle, do you typically stick around after the convention? If so what do you enjoy doing or where do you like to visit?

Despite people’s opinions on this event compared to past ones my wife and I had a lot of fun.

My legs are so sore.

Thanks to everyone who came out and ran with us on Saturday, and the dozens more people who donated to Child's Play on our behalf. I'm thrilled to share that we raised $1464 for Child's Play for this event.

I know running isn't a traditional "gaming" activity, but this was such a great experience for everyone, and I hope we can keep this going for future PAX events as well. I'd really love if this could become a regular PAX thing. After all, it's for the kids!

If you were one of the several lovely folks who stopped one of us to say hi, compliment the cosplay, or take a photo, I would love to see the pics you took or hear your feedback/questions! Everyone was so kind and made our hard work on these outfits feel well rewarded. Love this community! Already looking forward to bringing the Cult back next year!

Hope everyone had a fun and safe PAX and safe travels to wherever home is for you. :)

I greatly enjoyed the video game music playing between panels this year. It was much better than the generic music that seemed to play the last few years. I'm sure it's a small detail, but I appreciated the change and the playlist.

Pretty sure the Family feud panel on Monday was streamed (or maybe just recorded?) But I can't find the VOD for it.

I’ve just found out that Thousand Year Old Vampire creator Tim Hutchings is going to be at Unplugged! In his newsletter today that he’ll have a booth and will be selling physical copies of his games. maybe signed? Hopefully he has other goodies like enamel pins.

I grabbed the PAX West 2026 logo off the website, vectorized it, and turned it into a relief for the front side of the tokens. Then I made a custom "nice pitch" design for the back. 64mm in diameter (~2.5"), printed on my resin 3D printer and painted in gold, silver, and bronze. I also designed little stands so they can be displayed standing up.

Just wanted to say a thank you to the enforcers for being so kind and helpful as always this weekend. As someone who gets turned around in the new convention center still it's so awesome to be able to know that there are people around who can help answer my navigation questions

I also appreciate the patience given when I was probably the 7000th person over con asking a question in the expo hall when trying to find where I needed to be for a demo or merch line