PAX East 2011: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 03:49, 1 February 2011

PAX East is an annual convention, this year running from March 11 to 13, put on by the team at Penny Arcade. You should go. Last year rocked.

Rooms

Just like last year, we will have an IF Hospitality Suite (in the Westin, we think). This will be open noon-midnight on Friday, noon-midnight Saturday, and noon-3pm Sunday.

In addition, we will have an IF function room (also in the Westin) on Saturday only. (See Dave's notes below.) We'll schedule our larger events there.

Both rooms will be open to the public, and will not require a PAX badge.

Official PAX events

PAX has confirmed the following two events on their schedule. (These events will require a PAX badge.) Neither is IF-specific, but these are the ones including IF people:

"How to fund your game development project with Kickstarter" (Friday - 12:30 pm - Cat Theatre) -- Cindy Au, Andrew Plotkin, Joshua Newman, Evan Balster
"Interactive Drama: Dialogue as Gameplay" (Friday - 2:00 pm - Cat Theatre) -- Jonathon Myers, Stephen Dinehart, Evan Skolnick, Emily Short, John Gonzalez

Events in our IF rooms

Schedules are not yet finalized (they're not even initialized), so please add panel or event ideas here.

We all go out to eat before PAX (Thursday night). (Zarf will set this up)
I'd like to propose we do an open Speed-IF on Saturday. We'll do the madlib topic selections in the early afternoon and people have until 10pm to submit their works to me. - David Cornelson
An IF play event. (Basically a real-life ClubFloyd -- we throw a game up on a projector screen and give somebody the keyboard. Someone else reads the output out loud.) (What game?)
Grue Street IF writer's workshop. (Somewhat modified to be a public event. People bring in-progress IF work, we play them together and critique.)
Suggestion: IF-room discussion on puzzles as a way to tell story, not just a pacing device or way to control access
"Setting as character in narrative games" -- I proposed this as a PAX panel (Andrew Plotkin, Rob Wheeler, Stephen Granade, John Gonzalez (Obsidian), Dean Tate (Harmonix)). It wasn't accepted, but we should do it for our own program. I've emailed everybody on the original list.
"Meet the IF community" -- One of the Boston game people suggested that we should pick a time and say "If you're busy at PAX, but you want to stop by the IF suite and meet people at least once, *this* is a good time to do it." Just to avoid diffusion.
A lightning introduction to Inform 7? -- (Aimed at newcomers, not IF regulars, obviously. Jmac and Zarf did this at Boston Gameloop last year.)
Moving from inspiration to design? -- A lot of IF authors get lost in the steps from 'I want to write IF!' to how to go about doing so, so go through various starting points ("I want to evoke this kind of mood", "I want to explore this theme", "I want to emulate this kind of non-IF story", "I want to play with this kind of mechanic") and discuss how you'd go from there to fleshing out your ideas to picking a design process.
IF Demo Fair. Authors have the opportunity to work on tech demonstrations during February, focusing on one of several themes (new types of NPC interaction, new UI formats). During PAX, these will be on show on laptops. There will be a dedicated Demo Fair time when we get together and play through the demos on a projector; authors will be invited to talk about why they did what they did, if they're present. It's still permitted to submit a demonstration if you're not going to be there, and you're welcome to accompany your demo with some authorial notes to be shared with everyone. This is not a competition, in that there will be no official prizes, judges, or winners, and anyone is free both to enter and to offer feedback on other entries. There is now an official announcement.

Alcott Conference Room for Saturday

We have a meeting room reserved at the Westin for Saturday from 12 noon until 12 midnight, connected to the convention. It's 1,035sqft (41ft x 29ft) and seats up to 100 people. We'll have a theatre (rowed seats) layout.

Internet Connectivity

Individual Wi-Fi codes can be purchased for the day at $50 on Saturday, but they need to be requested early. As the day gets later, they won't provide new codes. There is a slight delay as codes are created. If anyone wants to pre-order Wi-Fi access, let me know.

Food

We cannot bring any of our own food or beverages into the meeting room. There's a union rule that bars outside food. There may be signs in the room saying "No Food or Beverages Allowed". The cost of hotel menu food is prohibitive.

Demo Fair

Time yet to be determined: playthrough on a projector of the works submitted to the IF demo fair.

Swag and other supply plans

Like last year: How-to-play-IF cards, nametag stickers, badge stickers. (Zarf)
Hadean Lands promo buttons. (Zarf)
A video projector. (Zarf)
Munchies for IF suite

People planning to attend

@@ Line 61: / Line 61: @@
 * [[Juhana Leinonen]]
 * [[Jesse McGrew]]
+* [[Jason McIntosh]]
 * [[Iain Merrick]]
 * [[Nick Montfort]]