Went to PAX West for 3 days.

Friday

Registering for Riftbound play session

On the first day we went in line for the TCG play area because my husband was really excited for Riftbound, Riot's upcoming TCG. What was crazy is that, for whatever reason, the group managing the booth were not expecting people to be lined up for signing up for play sessions when the convention opened at 10am. I think that was insane on their part, they thought that they'd only be starting at noon and that people would go to other places.

But no, poor planning on their part because literally within a minute they had a whole line of people around their booth and it needed to be capped. So not only were they unpreppared to have people sign up for their play session, they also needed time to figure out and test their sign up system... which seems counter intuitive: how would you be able to take in people for play sessions and register them if you weren't going to do sign ups till later in the day?

So my husband being first in line was their guinea pig for registering for play sessions. And after nearly an hour I finally got signed up for the same time slot. It kind of made sense that the booth was a mess because turns out this wasn't Riot official, rather it was a partnership with some FLGS and they were only able hand out promos rather than the demo decks.

Storytime with Naoki Yoshida panel

After registering for Riftbound, we headed up for going to the Storytime with Naoki Yoshida panel.

That one was really great. Unfortunately we did have to leave right as they were getting to the Q&A section because we needed to go back down to the basement floor to do our Riftbound playtest session.

Riftbound play session

Honestly, thankfully we already learned and played the game ourselves afterwards because the teach was really light and I kind of felt bad for the players next to us who kept encountering questions that needed answering just to play.

Also explored the TCG/RPG play area a bit, visiting the Flesh & Blood booth.

Artemis and exploration

After a quick bite for lunch we tried out this Artemis simulation game where you each manage a station of a space ship.

Browsed the tabletop and board game area, which had a couple of retailers.

Then we went into the Arch building to explore the expo hall proper.

I think it was both apt but insane for Gearbox to have a rage room at the expo hall. While on theme for Borderlands 4 I felt really bad for the other booths nearby for all the noise they were generating.

Wyrmspan

I ended Friday night playing Wyrmspan with people. What's crazy was after the game I learned that the one lady who won was actively trying to go to the World Series of Board Gaming, so while I felt like I was doing alright it was appropriate that I lost to someone like that. Still had a really fun and smooth time playing it.

Saturday

Next day, we woke up stupid early to go to the Expo hall in the Arch building, securing a nice waiting position right at the doors. We each had different goals: I wanted to get a welcome deck from the Magic: the Gathering booth, my husband wanted to try out the Crimson Desert game, and his sister was going to do a demo at the Nintendo booth.

What was crazy was that they were handing out free comics and when I questioned about the Welcome deck that they wouldn't be passing those out till 1:30 pm. Which was really frustrating because they didn't tell me that when I had asked about them yesterday. Would have saved me the time and effort waking up so early for kind of nothing.

Meet the Cast of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

I went off to the Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 panel.

And the panel itself was just really great, the voice and motion capture actors speaking on their experiences for making the game, honestly my highlight for this PAX.

One highlight was when they were showing off the crowd of cosplayers and at the camera man highlighted a dog dressed up. Ben Starr then says:

We just got upstaged by a dog.

Welcome Deck

Afterwards, I went directly back in Arch to try and get the MTG welcome deck. Although they said they'd hand out packs at 1:30 pm, turns out they started handing out decks earlier... And so the line was capped. There was a crowd of people kind of just kind of waiting away from the line, just waiting for the line to uncap, and the moment it did they all rushed in. Thankfully the line was pretty quick and I managed to get mine.

Sunday

The Relationship Between Game Design and Art Direction with Naoki Yoshida and Hiroshi Minagawa

On the last day we went to the panel, The Relationship Between Game Design and Art Direction with Naoki Yoshida and Hiroshi Minagawa. It was really enlightening to hear their experiences working on different projects and their approaces to how art and game design go together.

Cosplay

And lastly to share, some fun cosplayers that I took pictures of: