CONVENTION REVIEW: Pax 2022

by Jericho Moore and Logan Young

After a unfortunate gap due to the pandemic PAX East is back, bringing people of all different backgrounds, ethnicities, gender identities and sexual orientations under one roof to celebrate gaming and gaming culture. There was a collective sigh of relief from gamers everywhere at the return, and their enthusiasm was palpable. There were panels, new releases, guest appearances, demos, showcases, competitions, and the newbie in me didn’t have any idea where to start. With this being my first ever PAX, I feared staying in one specific area would make me miss a life altering panel, or an astounding game demo destined to become instant classic with release. So I phoned a friend, bringing a slightly more seasoned PAX attendee, and avid gamer with me as well. We caught the train, looked over the schedule, plotted out our days, and ignorant of the fact that very little would go exactly as we planned, headed inside the expo center. Immediately inside I was greeted with one of the biggest and surprisingly the roomiest expo halls I have ever seen. The staff were helpful and friendly as I managed the world of badges, lines, and trying to figure out where I was and where I was supposed to be. Overall a countless number of communities and experiences made me feel at ease, and more than welcome.

As I settled into this PAX experience, I felt that there was a constant theme that underlined this year’s expo. The theme of the panels I attended were focused on how to get into the gaming industry: Where to start, other people’s journeys, and constant tips on how to build your portfolio and make you stand out among the copious competition. This was headed by Alanah Pearce’s keynote address, which covered how to get into the gaming industry with a passion for writing, and was supplemented by Nicole Tompkins’ and Christian La Monte’s voice acting panel, offering the game through the lens of audio performance.

Starting with the writing and storytelling angle, I took two details away from Alanah’s keynote: the amount of blood, sweat and tears she endured to get to the position that she wanted to be in, and the amount of luck involved. Alanah started writing very young and as she grew up and more people started to realize that she was skilled, she took up a lot of freelance work. The sacrifices that she made during her freelance period extended to the point where she admitted to being taken advantage of. She stressed that she felt the freelance work was necessary to get her work published, so she could build a portfolio that increased her chances of getting her dream job, but also unlined that the extent of free, unpaid labor isn’t something to aspire to. After years of freelance work and numerous publications under her belt, she was able to secure a job in California with IGN as a reviewer, and with the assistance of that company, make her way to the states from her home in Australia. She followed up with this declaration of victory with a caution, admitting that her getting that position and most positions after that was pure luckShe was in the right place, at the right time, with enough experience but not too much experience to be considered overqualified. She even went as far as saying that anyone that tells you there is no luck in terms of getting into the industry is “fucking lying.” This was her path, and even if I couldn’t follow it exactly, I could take the lessons she offered, and apply them to whatever path I had ahead of me, and while I can’t say for certain, I’m sure many others in the audience felt the same way, especially if we’re judging by round of applause.

“The Oeuvre of Hidetaka Miyazaki”, a panel run by the staff of withaterriblefate.com, had its writing focus pointed another way. Instead of how to get into the gaming business through writing, it focused on writings effect on games, and how their stories are told, through the lens of Miyazaki’s Souls games. Different to most stories, and exclusive to gaming as a storytelling medium, Miyazaki’s form of telling makes use of the game’s world and item descriptions. Exploration as a form of storytelling lets the player seek out the story, put it together themselves and effect its direction. Item descriptions are key to lore, helping put together pieces of a puzzle, instead of blurb text indicating use and function. The act of playing, of fighting through the notoriously difficult boss fights, seeking out every inch of every map just to grasp a hint of purpose to your path through these games in an integral part of the story itself. The struggle for motivation in the dim world of Dark Souls, or the literal light of grace pointing you forward, formless and unknowable in Elden Ring, embed the player in the story in a way few games manage, despite the many ‘souls-like’ games on the market now. Many games nowadays not only take inspiration from the Dark Souls’ style of gameplay but more writers are taking inspiration from Miyazaki’s storytelling style, and other storytelling devices unique to the medium of gaming.

While contemplating this new view on Miyazaki’s work, I met SungWon Cho, better known as ProZD of YouTube and social media fame. It was an absolute treat to meet him at his autograph session during the second day of PAX. SungWon started out by uploading audio posts daily to the social media app tumblr to build his portfolio and strengthen his repertoire of voices. He then got his first paid voice acting job on the Indie game Apotheonas the main villain Zeus. He now boasts leading roles in AAA titles such as Borderlands 3, where he voices the beastmaster FL4K. Alongside voice acting, SungWon has a large catalog of comedic skits where he utilizes his repertoire of voices in hilarious ways to tell short cut stories. I personally started following ProZd about five years ago through his YouTube channel, where he posts these skits. Being able to go from watching his various YouTube videos where he talked about anime and manga, to now where I can pick up a game or start watching a tv show and randomly come across a character and be able to immediately recognize that they are voiced by him is a feat worth congratulating for SungWon Cho.

The voice acting panel that I attended focused on what it must have been like recording lines in a booth, along with more of the grit and grind that comes with the profession of voice acting. Many people cah picture standing bolding in front of a mic, headphones all, declaring victory or promising death, but many miss the long hours of just standing in the booth repeating lines dozens of times to get the perfect take, or issuing five types of impact grunts for when your character takes damage.Nicole and Christian offered some tips and tricks on how to better your voice and strengthen it for voice acting, and overcoming the discouraging process of attending countless numbers of auditions and receiving only maybe five or six call backs that may not even lead to something. But keeping high spirits is how they get through the process every time.

Soul searching and job advice aside, the main floor of the expo hall was still packed with video games and developer booths that needed exploration. PAX was much heavier on indie titles and developers than I expected. The only AAA developers that I saw at PAX were Gearbox and Larian Studios. While going through the expo hall and testing all kinds of different indie games, two stuck out to me: The Last Hero of Nostalgia developed by Over The Moon Games and Cursed to Golf developed by Chuhai Labs. Last Hero of Nostalgia had a very unique art style with it starting with a scene of beautiful graphics, which then degraded into a very pixelated world where your character quite literally turns into a stick figure with a sarcastic character creation screen. The premise is very unique with the combat being heavily inspired by dark souls. Cursed to Golf was also a pixel art style game with a very unique golfing gameplay about a golf champion being struck by lightning during a tournament and being sent to golf purgatory. With the main goal of the game being traversing through said golf purgatory and escaping. I highly recommend getting both when they come out

Despite the digital scene and the world of video games getting much of the attention, PAX has more then embraced the rise of tabletop role playing games, (TTRPGs) which were already starting to gain attention, and came in force during the pandemic. Main players on the TTRPG scene, such as Wizards of the Coast and their Dungeons and Dragons games, ran organized games for veterans and newcomers around the clock. Gehenna Games left a large footprint on this year’s PAX East running a variety of games with a darker twist, as well as running panels on how to tell a horror story, while keeping your audience feeling perfectly safe. There was a delight in embracing this darkness, delving into imaginary madness, that pulled like a sirens call in the hands of these game masters. Unlike many other games available at PAX, the TTRPG’s Gehenna Gaming ran lasted upwards of four or more hours, and it passed in a flash. The more traditional dark games like Call of Cthulhu and Vampire the Masquerade were among the options, but also smaller, lesser known niche games. A memorable game of Good Society was the delight of one such evening. In that game the players were polite society folk from the age of Jane Austen, fighting off both rumor, and dark secrets while trying to rise in society’s esteem, grow rich, or ruin others. While storytelling and the gaming world have much to do with each other, the tabletop world carved its own unique niche in guiding players to tell their own stories of adventure, madness, and danger for the pure fun of it.

PAX East was a great experience for me and I loved every second of it. Everyone I met whether they be celebrity or enforcer were extremely welcoming and helpful to a first time PAX goer like myself. Having gone with friends made this event even more memorable to me, and it was an experience that I won’t soon forget. I look forward to being able to attend next year, reunite with the friends that I made there, and see what the gaming industry has to offer in the coming years. I want to give a very heartfelt thank you to all of the teams PAX and all the people who helped bring this community of gamers together in such trying times.

Last Hero of Nostalgia: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1766100/The_Last_Hero_of_Nostalgaia/

Cursed to golf: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1726120/Cursed_to_Golf/

Written by Jericho Mooreand Logan Young

Edited by Jericho Moore.