They Came, They Saw, They PAXed

A full 72-hours of the yearly gamer take-over of downtown Seattle has come to a close. The Penny Arcade Expo (PAX Prime 2011) washed over the Washington State Convention Center leaving locals and tourists not involved in the event asking, "What in the world is going on here this weekend? Why are so many people dressed up like Mario and giant painted cardboard cubes?"

As was the case last year, another 70,000 gamers from as far away as New Zealand turned out in droves filling the Convention Center, Paramount Theater and Sheridan. Clever gamer shirts could be seen up and down Pike donning shiny red badges around participants' necks.

A crowd eagerly awaits entry into the Paramount Theater for the opening ceremonies.

In the Expo Hall where games big and small were being demoed, the highlights this year included BioWare's newest addition to their series -- Mass Effect 3, Bethesda Softworks' Skyrim, several new titles from 2K and Gearbox and Firefall, being released by Red 5 Studios at the end of 2011. A new addition to this years' console game presentation was an entire floor in the Convention Center Annex dedicated to the Microsoft title, Halo 4, called "Halo Fest".

Aside from the big titles which drew lengthy lines, on the sixth floor of the Convention Center was a "second expo hall" dedicated to smaller, independent game releases. While the game industry grows in popularity amongst both "hardcore" and "casual" gamers, indie games are getting more recognition and coming up with some pretty incredible concepts. Included in the favorites of this years' indie games were Word Fighter -- a competitive two-player Boggle-esq iPad game and Solar 2 -- a PC game that lets you roll around and grow a planet into a universe by sucking up objects in space. Games for every platform including the new Play Station being released soon, XBox, PC, iPad and more could be found at this years PAX 10 -- a selection of ten up-and-coming indie titles that the convention organizers, Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins, pick to be showcased.

Speakers this year talked about how the game industry is changing and growing and what we might come to expect in this coming year. Panels such as "What Women Want in Gaming" are being well attended and growing in popularity as females begin to turn out in equal numbers to males at these types of conventions. More and more space and attention is being provided for the table-top, pen-and-paper and card game mediums than have certainly been seen in previous years at PAX. With the growing number of attendees and the seemingly never ending lines for the "big names" both in games and presenters, allowing for alternatives to appeal to the more casual gamer attendees is refreshing and hopefully a growing trend.