PAX Prep

The other pastime I hope to enjoy is bar-hopping. Drinking beer is something I usually enjoy after a hard day at work. I am a bulk buyer for a major grocery store so most of my day involves lifting heavy bags to fill bins. I do some minor desk work which takes about a hour of my day, but mostly it�s lifting, lifting, and more lifting. A nice cold beer always calms my nerves after a long day; my favorite beer to imbibe with dinner is Brooklyn Brewery�s Brooklyn Lager. I also greatly enjoy weird beers. Last week I tried 21st Amendment Brewery�s Hell High Watermelon beer which I can only be described as PBR with a watermelon-y aftertaste. A great aspect of hanging out in bars is meeting people in their natural state, relaxed and not in a rush to get from point A to point B. The best aspect is, since PAX is in town, the bars will be crawling with gamers who just want to let loose. To be honest, the beer can, at times, also break the ice sometimes when you�re at a loss for words.

PAX is great for meeting new people, and bar-hopping, but it also has a lot more than that. The other reason why every gamer should go to PAX is the amount of useful information you�ll be getting. David is about to graduate with a degree in computer programming and would really like to break into the video game industry. What better place to learn than PAX? Just look at the list of all the panels of interest to aspiring game designers.

Personally, I am excited for all the panels about the good that video games are doing. I am especially excited to hear from Jane McGonigal, the keynote speaker, largely because of her book, Reality Book, which examines both the pros and cons of video games. She has actually posted a few rules to live by which any gamer should follow. Most of them are common sense, but it is helpful to have these rules in written form for the masses to see. Too many times I have seen a younger generation of gamers playing 24/7 online and not playing games enough in a social environment.

What I hope to learn from my short, four day vacation to PAX is that gamers can be just as social as any other group of people. Gamers come from all walks of life. Gamers range from the poor to rich, black to white, female to male, married to single, introverted to extroverted, etc. PAX is a place where game companies are not lurking to burn your wallets, and the people are not there to laugh at your horrible performance at Black Ops. PAX is simply a forum where every gamer has a place, from the casual to the hardcore. I hope to see you in the promised land.

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LOOK WHO CAME:

Gaming in Public