Mood: Good!
Music: Limelight, Rush (Live)
Game: A Tale In The Desert 3, TitanQuest, WoW (Yes, again...), Super Monkey Ball Adventure
Book: Chapterhouse Dune, Frank Herbert
Watching: Not much.
Weather: 65, Cloudy.
I got asked today if I was planning on attending PAX.
PAX is a gaming conference organized by the two guys who write Penny Arcade.
In case you're not a gamer in the slightest, Penny Arcade is arguably the single most read online gaming webcomic on the planet. (PVPOnline is probably number 2...although I have no evidence one way or the other.)
PAX is held in Seattle (Bellevue to be exact) and apparently it's a pretty well-attended geekfest. And, with the recent fall of E3 as we know it, these guys might well be the biggest game in town at the moment.
Having been to E3 and a few other game-type conventions, it would seem like a slamdunk. A gaming convention in my (now) hometown. Can't ask for more than that, right?
Well...no. While I read Penny Arcade occasionally, and occasionally find them quite funny, their fame has carried these two guys into a fairly exalted status in the gaming world. In fact, in the last several years, their attitude has gone from "irreverent ranters" to "minority whip and voice of the common gamer." And somewhere in there, I kind of started deciding that while they occasionally made some decent points, the gaming world has somehow decided that these guys were unofficial spokesmen for the hardcore gaming community.
Now, they've parlayed this position into some fairly serious perks. Much respect for that. They get sneak peeks at things, they get early versions/releases of games, they are asked to many conventions, and they now draw comics/art for all sorts of gaming companies, particularly their websites. They have also launched a tshirt company (or at least joined forces with one) and put out a fair amount of tshirts. They speak at conferences.
All well and good. My problem is that all of a sudden, they're writing as if what they say is gospel...that with a quick pass over the keyboard, they can cause the decline in sales of a game...and know it. On more than one occasion, they've written cartoons and articles that imply or outright say that folks like John Smedley write them and ask them to be kind.
Perhaps it's true. Perhaps these guys get the kind of readership that implies that major publishers and producers need to hope that these two guys don't get pissed at them for fear of riling up their audience against them. It might be so.
Perhaps I'm just bristling at the fact that I'm supposedly being represented by a pair of cartoonists...along with every other hardcore gamer under the sun...as if we're a homogenous group. Perhaps I find that I'm disagreeing with them more and more as they take their tone more and more imperiously.
I don't know. I DO know that they're probably making a small fortune doing what they love, and are well-known in the gaming community, and that they probably wake up every morning and thank God for all that.
Whatever. They don't speak for me.
And that's why I'm not going.
Posted by Glenn at August 2, 2006 09:50 PMOne of the things I like about PA is that they usually tell it how it is. They don't cater to the publishers or the developers. Even with their fame the still call out the things that suck about the industry. I find so many "gaming magazines and webzines and blogs" tell you that every game is "awesome" and no game ever gets a "rating" of below 8.0/10...after all business is good for everyone if copies of a game sell.
Things like this always happen. Look at all the d-bags that represent the professional sports world. If I have to choose between Terrell Owens and PA as my representative body, I'll pick PA.
Posted by: Smitty5k at August 3, 2006 07:40 AM