PAX AUS 2015 Day Two

The new strategy of same-day posting is not without its downsides: getting to bed somewhat later (earlier?) than optimal being amongst them. But day one was posted up fine, more or less on day one itself, so here’s day two.

Weather report: Thunder last night saw us met by a grey drizzle this morning in contrast to yesterdays sun; the cool not not altogether unpleasant as I have a decent jacket equipped for the purposes of being nice and weather repellent as well as making for an easy carry when it warms up.

First stop this morning was the PA make-a-strip with Tycho and Kris Straub. Kris is a funny guy and his commentary played well against Jerry through the session. Kris is the artist behind comics like chainsawsuit and broodhollow. The questions Jerry fielded through the session ranged from the common stuff (what would you guys be doing if not this) to more difficult ones which boiled down to ‘what secrets haven’t you told us yet’ – which as Jerry puts it, is not much since they put most of their lives out there through PA and PAX.

Due to the late night the next stop was the coffee stand, which was a great decision because a short distance away we had the chance to meet Robert Khoo. Khoo is an engaging conversationalist and we had an entertaining chat on a range of topics, from PAX through to political theories to a few odd things we do differently here in Australia, pausing occasionally for Robert to do some pin trading and have photos taken with passers by. Erik the PA IT guy was also along which was handy because I got to ask him in person about his role there, which I’ve been curious about it since Kenneth moving on and the somewhat infamous PA job advert a few years back. Although I really love my current job I’ve worked some pretty gruelling IT gigs in the past and I wondered what Eriks experience was like: from what he said I’d say it could be summed up as ‘demanding but rewarding’.
Next up was an overdue tour of the exhibition hall. We adopted a zigzag search pattern to get past as many things as we could, culminating in the indy pavilion which is now called ‘PAX Rising’. Theres quite a few encores from last year there as well as the new stuff and as usual I’m keen to have a proper look. For now we just took the tour and had a chat with Alicia from League of Monkeys,who saw we were loading up on the badges and managed to one-up every other place I’ve seen with an offering of a variety of about 15 badges which pretty much had the lanyard packed. We had a chat about their game and what’s involved in putting on an exhibit at PAX. I’ll try to get back past there later on to have a better look at the game itself, which is a mobile game called ‘Torque Burnout’.

We managed to eject ourselves into the main hall again and sat down for lunch in a fairly quiet area near the Galah theater. Its great that PAX has a couple places like this with tables setup where you can just sit down, eat, chat, rearrange your bag and whatnot.

After this was the Good Game AMA/Q&A panel in the main theater. This was great; the Good Game crew are relaxed, entertaining and offered some seriously considered answers to some fairly edgy questions. I’ve caught the occasional episode, but I’ll look into streaming some more – the option to stream ABC shows online is central to me having time for this so its great that’s on offer.

We popped back into the freeplay area where I played my first game of Duck Hunt on the NES in about 20 years =) Oddly enough both Katy and I were thinking it would be cool to get a pistol shooter game for playstation. I’m not sure if it would be a thing where the novelty would wear off quickly or not, but it might be good to suss out what games support the hardware these days.

We flopped in the beanbag area for a few minutes before migrating to a quiet end of the convention centre to rest and get started on the blog post. Had some dinner just down the road and returned in time to catch the last half of Omegathon round four; Super Avalanche 2.

Afterwards we stayed in the main theater and managed to get a nice seat near the front for the concerts. The Doubleclicks were up first, followed by Axis of Awesome, with MC Frontalot finishing up the night. The Doubleclicks were great; I liked their social anxiety song about cats at parties and the frequent dinosaur references. I didnt realise Axis of Awesome were from Australia; they were funny and well worth seeing; I think one of my favorite bits was the dubstep dancing. I’ve heard the name of MC Frontalot mentioned a lot over the years and it was cool to finally see what his gig is all about.

This brought to an end one of the longest PAX days I’ve had but also one of the best; Now I’m looking forward to a longer / nights sleep ready for Sunday.