Hero image: PAX Rising at PAX Aus. Photo: Maria Boyadgis, PAX Aus
I’m going to say something that might sound a little backwards the day before PAX Aus opens its doors. The big publisher booths are not the reason you should be at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre this weekend, and if you only have one day there, I think you should spend most of it in the indie halls instead.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand the pull of the headline names. The expo line-up has SEGA bringing four playable games, Activision letting people try Modern Warfare 4 multiplayer before it launches later this month, and Square Enix showing off Final Fantasy VII Revelation. That’s a lot of shiny things under one roof. But be honest with yourself for a second. How many of those are games you’re going to be playing at home within weeks or months anyway, on your own couch, with no queue and a much better chair?
That’s the part I can’t get past. A blockbuster demo at a convention is usually a short slice of something you’ll have in your hands before long, and you’ll often spend longer lining up for it than playing it. I’m not saying it isn’t fun, because it is. I’m saying it’s the one thing at PAX you can most easily get somewhere else, and you paid for a badge to get the things you can’t.
The indie halls are exactly those things. PAX says there are more than ninety games across the Aus Indie Showcase, PAX Rising and New Zealand’s CODE this year, from emerging Australian developers to new studios from across the Tasman. PAX Rising alone describes itself as a place to meet the creators face to face and play projects that are “bold, experimental, surprising, and often not found anywhere else”. I mean, read that last bit again. Not found anywhere else. Isn’t that the whole point of going?
And you get something there that no AAA booth can give you, which is the person who actually made the game, standing right next to you while you play it. You can tell them what confused you, ask why the jump feels the way it does, or just tell them you loved it. I think that matters more than people give it credit for, because for a small team, a weekend of strangers playing their game is feedback they would struggle to get any other way. Your opinion is worth something there in a way it simply isn’t at a queue for a game that has already shipped its marketing campaign.
There’s a local reason too. These halls are where a lot of Australian and New Zealand games get their first real audience, and if you care about there being more games made here, this is about the most direct way you can show it without spending a cent. Play something. Wishlist it if you liked it. Tell a friend. Would you rather be the person who found a great local game a year before it came out, or the person who played a demo of something everyone else was going to play too?
So my advice, for what it’s worth, is to treat the big booths as the dessert and the indie halls as the meal. You’ll probably still end up in a queue for something with a famous name on it, and I don’t blame you, because I’m not made of stone either. But try to walk out on Sunday with a list of games you’d never heard of on Thursday. I think you’ll have a better PAX for it, and I know which kind of weekend I’d rather hear about.
Source: PAX Aus – Expo floor line-up, PAX Aus – PAX Rising, PAX Aus – Aus Indie Showcase