PAX South Emerges in San Antonio
More stories from Jared Wright
Photo By: Jared Wright
Attendees dressed up as characters from the hit game, Halo.
On January 23, 2015, the inaugural Penny Arcade Expo South kicked off, otherwise known as PAX South. PAX is a gaming expo that previously only existed in Seattle, Boston, and Melbourne. PAX started in 2004 as a relatively small 4,500 person event in Bellevue, Washington. Now, it has three locations across the United States and one in Australia. PAX Prime, the original PAX, sells out in minutes and regularly has over 70,000 attendees.
PAX is a place for game developers to show off the newest games and technology to gamers. Along with the main show room, PAX has panels with prominent people in the industry speaking to attendees and nightly concerts. Each convention also features areas to play tabletop and card games, a bring-your-own-computer area, and a handheld console lounge.
The first PAX South ran January 23-25 at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center. More than 50,000 attended, showing promise to continue the convention for years to come.
Alien Ware’s Sponsored Vehicle
At the entrance to the show floor, there was a brightly lit Alienware truck, a large booth for Twitch.tv (a streaming site), and a big setup for the new strategy game, Grey Goo. There were a few unreleased games such as Gigantic, a team based action game; Dreadnought, a class based space combat game; and Evolve, a cooperative monster hunting game, which has been widely available in various alphas and betas recently. Nintendo also displayed the new 3DS with playable demos of Majora’s Mask and Monster Hunter 4. Other new indie games were on display that are either currently in early access or unreleased.
All this added up to over 120 exhibitors and plenty of new things to show, along with plenty of people to show them to. Like the other events, PAX South served as a way for fans to meet developers and content producers such as streamers at the large Twitch booth by the entrance. Cosplay was also a common sight, with many fans going all out to show off the things they love. PAX South established itself as a viable new middle ground for the other two in the United States, and is located in our own back yard.