I spent the weekend in heaven… geek heaven, that is. The boys, my husband, and I went to PAX 2007 in Seattle. The Penny Arcade Expo is a three-day game festival for video, desktop, and table gamers. It’s grown steadily in size since it debuted in 2004, doubling every year. This year it took up the Seattle Convention Center.
Do you remember those geeks from high school that spent every free hour playing Dungeons & Dragons? They’re still around, still geeks, and still trying to become the Dungeon Master. Back when I was in high school, a lot of the kids who played it were the darker, morose, disturbed teens. I saw very little of that at PAX. The overwhelming majority of attendees were twenty-something males who looked a lot like your neighbor, your banker, your waiter, or your bag boy.
Yes, there were the occasional freaks (underwear man, for one), but it was largely family-friendly. Several of the larger gaming companies were there, showcasing their current products and giving previews on their new ones. What wonderful market research to have thousands of your target market playing your games and talking freely about them.
Some of the lines were very long. Others were not. I was pretty surprised to see empty seats in the X-Box area. That doesn’t bode well. Especially since the line for the new Wii games snaked around several booths. World of Warcraft had a huge line as did Playstation’s RockStar. But the biggest line in the whole place? Uber-geeks stood for more than an hour to have a chance to have their photo taken with and talk to Wil Wheaton. Who? Wesley Crusher from Star Trek: TNG. You remember, the kid with the annoying plastic smile, tv son of the pretty redheaded doctor. Turns out he wrote a great book, Just A Geek, that struck a chord with today’s outside-the-inner-circle-youth. After watching all the faces light up as they met, talked, and hugged him, I’m definitely going to have to read it.
Julie Gentry is the Deals blogger for Families.com. She is also a geek-by-choice, which is completely different than a nerd-by-birth!