As you probably heard last week, Jono and I went to PAX South this year. I thought I’d share some of my pics, thoughts and experiences about the delightful Southern edition of what is probably the most “fan forward” video game/gaming convention going these days. If you only want the photos, feel free to just head to the flickr album here.
First of all, there’s the weather. I’ve never been to PAX West (formerly Prime) or obviously PAX Australia, but I will say that one of the (slight) detractors of PAX East is that Boston in the Spring is just a slightly warmer version of Montreal in the Spring. Which means it’s still jackets and pants weather. Not so in San Antonio. We hit a high of 29 Celsius on Sunday last week (84 Fahrenheit), that’s shorts and pants weather. If I’m going to be dealing with flights and exchange rates from the abysmal Canadian dollar, warm weather is a definite bonus.
The other thing that I really liked about PAX South is the convention location. It’s literally right in the middle of downtown San Antonio, anyone who’s been to PAX East (with the exception of the first edition) knows that the convention center is located quite a ways out of the city. Sure, it’s pretty easily accessible from public transportation, but not in any kind of walk-able distance. That means you’re either “at the con” or “in the city” and transitioning between the two takes some time and a subway or taxi ride. Not so at South. Every single day of the con we could pop into PAX, head out for drinks or food, go back to PAX, head to the hotel, go to dinner, go back to PAX for a concert or what have you. It felt like a good excuse to get out and see San Antonio, and not just wind up either skipping a whole day of PAX or ignoring the host city.
So weather and location were upsides for me, how did the actual convention do? ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
