Just a little taste of our PAX 2014 experience for you - full disclosure will happen on tomorrow's Insert Credit(s)!
Like last year, PAX Dev 2014 is a black box - can't really talk about what happened there. Just know that it was awesome, and I would whole-heartedly recommend attending if you can afford it and are at all interested in the game development scene / industry.
PAX Prime 2014 was...pretty fucking incredible. On top of being (one of) the best ways to interface with tons of nice, pleasant, independent developers, there's plenty to see and hear. All the major console players were there, of course, as well as tons of PC and gaming peripheral / hardware vendors, too. The usual run of contests, raffles, giveaways, et cetera.
My experience this year was actually much better, personally. I took it upon myself to enter a couple game contests. One, a Nuclear Throne challenge (I lost...), and two...a Jamestown tournament (I won!). In both cases, I managed to entertain a rather large crowd, somehow; and I took home an awesome shirt for the former (thanks, Rami and Vlambeer!) and an awesome high-quality arcade stick for the latter (thanks, Tim and Final Form Games!). All in all, lots of fun and lots of action!
Met plenty of other cool folks, too! Randomly met Jim Crawford at the tourament; talked briefly with Jan Willem Nijman; photo'd and talked with Tommy Refenes for the second year running; offered to buy a build of Mike Tipul's Enemy Starfighter for $50 (he declined); and met up with the full team from Anisoptera Games, a connection made through CrowdCounsel, whom we met last year; experienced SoundSelf, a...game(?) from Robin Arnott. Aaaaaaand...shook hands and exchanged cards with countless other indie devs. Many of them have active Kickstarters, or will have them soon.
If that's not enough, everyone I talked to was 100% in favor of streaming games on Twitch, so I've got another dozen or so to add to the list for Quest for Semi-Glory! Hooray!
So, another fantastic PAX! Looking forward to future encounters, as always.
(More name-drops to follow tomorrow and on Twitter! Can never get enough names!)
