A slow start for me with this first day at PAX but it was good to line up with everyone for the opening and check out this year’s booths. The new film Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves was pushed hard to people lining up so there’s a bit of sponsorship in play there. Indies really dominated the space with only Square Enix and Devolver the only publishers I immediately noticed when walking through.

As for panels I ended up going to a double header with the “storytime” session followed up by the first of the Penny Arcade Q&A’s. This year’s storytime was with Shuhei Yoshida, current head of Indies over at PlayStation and costar of the meme that sunk Xbox One. I was hoping that the session might dive into more of his history there and while there were a couple of interesting titbits, he was one of the earliest employees of PlayStation, most of the conversation steered towards selling the company to indie devs at PAX. Was a bit of a disappointment that lead to a much quieter Q&A as many left the theatre quickly.

One of my first stops walking around was of course to get my retro gaming fix and see what I could play over the next couple of days. I grabbed a few pictures of PC games boxes on the way out too… a few of the games there I have run memories of so nice to see them again. 🙂

For me, probably the biggest disappointment was that PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo weren’t there which made the show floor very much a PC only space. Having Amazon Prime take up a space the size of Nintendo’s last one was not something I was expecting at PAX. With the Bethesda event I’m going to held at a different venue it does leave a bit of a vacuum here. The show floor is a busy place and for big games it can be hard to manage the crowds so I could understand them wanting a venue that lets them manage it better but they are also taking away a chance for random people to walk over and be surprised. I suppose I will see tomorrow if it was the right choice or not.

A quiet start for me and it was clear I was nowhere near match fit for walking around all day but I still have two more days to wander and I’ll be kept occupied… I always am! 🙂