It’s been almost two weeks since I attended the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) in Seattle. I’m still distilling my own thoughts and emotions on the weekend – the pleasure of meeting new friends, schmoozing with famous people, the incredible stress of my volunteer workload, the joy of showing my work to so many people, and the praise I received for it. It’ll take some time to write it all up, edit the videos, and sort through the hundreds of digital photos. Instead of waiting until I get it all down, I’ll post as it comes.

First, some background:

I’ve been a casual reader of Penny Arcade for a long time. At first I was attracted to Tycho’s writing, but I came to be impressed by Gabe’s obvious work ethic and sense of humor, too. I’d visit their site from time to time, but it wasn’t until they proposed a Penny Arcade Alliance on World of Warcraft that I became a real fan.

Despite starting my character about 30 levels behind, I managed to catch up and play with Dudefella, Gabe’s character, on the Dark Iron server. It was he that invited me into the Fancy Lads guild, it was he that invited me on horde-hunts nightly through the Western Plaguelands, and it was he that recruited me into Dudefella’s Arathi Basin Crew. I even ran Molten Core with his wife a time or two.

Sadly, Dudefella and Kimbela have stopped playing, but it was in his AB Crew that I met a friend of his, Elli. I’ve been running battlegrounds with Elli for, oh, probably more than a year now. We’ve chatted over Ventrilo and despite never using our real names, managed to get to know each other fairly well. Since the Burning Crusade expansion pack came out in January, Elli’s real-life friends and my own have formed a tight-knit little raiding party.

Earlier this year, I made a commitment to go to PAX, the Penny Arcade Expo, in Seattle. Oksana readily agreed to go with me, if only so she could do some shopping shop while I toured the video game related booths, panels, and concerts. When I mentioned to Elli that I’d be coming down for the convention, suggesting that we might be able to meet up, he went a step further and recruited me into his volunteer team of Omegatechs. His offer would be the catalyst for an amazing weekend.

At the last minute, our friends Mike and Amelia decided to join us. We booked hotels and flights, paid for our conference passes, and arrived just before the last weekend in August…

(To be continued…)

Just about 10 years ago now, I was caught up in a routine where some friends and I would gather at Joe and Karl’s place to hang out. We’d do all sorts of things, but the ones that stand out in my memory were pretty high up on the geek scale: Watching endless hours of the Simpsons, taking turns playing X-wing on Joe’s computer, painting miniatures, and making up new rules and maps for Axis & Allies. In retrospect, the only thing that saved us from debating the merits of the latest in pocket-protector technology was that we also played a fair bit of pool and used chainsaws to cut up the forest behind their house to make trails for four-wheeler races.

We were geeks, but there was still hope.

Just before a few of us packed up and headed off to college, someone managed to get their hands on the shareware version of Doom. I can’t imagine that we downloaded it… in those days, 9600 baud was still a fantasy. No, it probably came on one of the first PC Gamer disks. Not a compact disc – the floppy kind.

Years before, back in middle school, I had played Castle Wolfenstein. In fact, I beat that game on my Apple IIc. I don’t remember much – PC-speaker-garbled German shouts, an overhead view of a white-on-black maze, and a race against the clock to escape the castle after planting a bomb next to Hitler. If I remember that much of it even now, it must have been a good game.

During my first year of college, Wolfenstein 3D came out. I played through the shareware version of that, too, but didn’t find it that remarkable. Yes, it pushed the technological envelope, but it never fully captured my imagination. Perhaps that was because the graphics engine made me motion sick. Still, it couldn’t have been all bad since I played through physical illness just to complete the game. That’s gotta count for something.
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