PAX East 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). 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 hosted by us

Schedules are not yet finalized, so please add panel or event ideas below.

Thursday

We all go out to eat before PAX (Thursday, 7 pm). (Zarf will set this up)

Friday, IF suite

(The two PAX panels noted above are early Friday afternoon. IF suite events will be in the afternoon and evening.)

Late afternoon smaller panel?
"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.

Saturday, Alcott Room

All Saturday events will be in the Alcott room, because that's when we'll have it. Times will be determined soon. (Hopefully PAX will post an official schedule for us to work around. I don't want to post more than one every two hours, as turning chaos into lunacy is tiring.)

Speed-IF. We'll do the madlib topic selections in the early afternoon and people have until 10pm to submit their works to me. - David Cornelson
A lightning introduction to Inform 7. (Andrew Plotkin, Jason McIntosh)
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.) (Game TBA)
"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.
IF Demo Fair. (Emily Short.) 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.

Sunday, IF suite

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. (Participants: ???)

(At 3pm we chase everybody out and start deconstructing the room. Anyone still around for dinner, we'll meet up.)

Other ideas

Suggestion: IF-room discussion on puzzles as a way to tell story, not just a pacing device or way to control access
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.)

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

How-to-play-IF cards (Zarf)
Left over from last year: "say hello" nametag stickers, ">" badge stickers, "frotz badge" badge stickers. (Zarf)
Hadean Lands promo buttons. (Zarf)
Munchies for IF suite

Equipment

A video projector. (Zarf is bringing this -- it has VGA and S-video inputs)
Extension cords, power strips (Zarf, but more wouldn't hurt)
From last year: sharpies, paper, magic blue tape (Zarf)

Posters for Rooms

I'd love to see us pull together poster images for as many games as possible and have them printed to decorate our walls. I think we can shoot for 24" x 36" at a reasonable price. Sign below with your game name and your name if you have or can produce an image by end of February.

The Shadow in the Cathedral - Textfyre
Jack Toresal and The Secret Letter - Textfyre
The Empath's Gift (Coming Soon) - Textfyre
Parchment - Dannii
Hadean Lands - Zarf
The Warbler's Nest - Jmac

People planning to attend