1323: PAX Pox

Another Penny Arcade Expo (aka PAX) is coming to a close, and once again I find myself sorry I wasn’t there — though perhaps not quite as sorry as I’d be if I wasn’t working in the games press and would not therefore be obligated to, you know, write about stuff if I was actually there.

That said, attending an event like PAX as a professional is pretty exciting, too — though for different reasons to if you’re going as a “civilian”. I haven’t covered a PAX as a professional since I’ve worked full-time in the biz, but I did attend a Gamescom for GamePro a couple of years back, and that was oddly thrilling. It was also completely exhausting due to the fact that I’d spend all day zipping between appointments and all night writing up the things I learned in said appointments, leaving approximately three hours for sleeping per night — no, I didn’t do any socialising whatsoever, but you know me; that was, to be honest, absolutely fine by me.

Gamescom is a bit of a different setup to PAX, though — at least in my limited experience having attended one of each. While PAX is a sprawling consumer show that occupies convention halls, theatres and corridors, and at which you generally have to make some very tough decisions about whether to wait in line to see panels and/or concerts or actually brave the show floor, Gamescom has a very clear divide between the “consumer” bit and the “trade” bit.

The “consumer” part of the Gamescom I attended was even more chaotic than PAX. Several huge halls of the Kölnmesse were devoted to the event, and for some reason the organisers seemed to think that turning the lights down low would be a really good idea. The floor of all the exhibition halls was literally (yes, I mean literally) carpeted with discarded flyers and other rubbish, and it was noisy, crowded and difficult to get around.

Contrast with the “trade” part, which was over on the opposite side of the Kölnmesse, and was the complete opposite — in fact, much more what I expected from a games industry show, based on my extremely limited experience from attending ECTS once back in the ’90s. A sense of calm; companies showing their products privately in booths, many of which had refreshments and comfortable chairs; a feeling of organisation rather than chaos. (Much more stereotypically German, to put it another way.) I vastly preferred the “trade” side of things, because it meant I got to see lots of cool stuff without having to fight my way through hordes of people who just wanted to stare at other people playing League of Legends on a big screen. This was largely because I had appointments to see specific people in the trade bit, whereas the consumer bit was pretty much a free-for-all.

That said, on balance I think I preferred my trip to PAX East to my professional engagement at Gamescom. At Gamescom I didn’t feel like I was “at home” or “among friends”, largely because I was just there to do a job and didn’t really have time to enjoy anything. At PAX East, meanwhile, I was among friends — many of whom I was meeting in person for the first time after many years of communicating on the Internet — and I had a real sense of “belonging”; of being among people who understood the same things I was passionate about.

One day I’ll make it back, and I’ll make a point of making some time to hang out with cool people. Until that happens, though, I’ll just have to gaze jealously from a distance at each PAX that comes and goes — and at my friends and colleagues who attend them.

1310: Nice Job, Sony

It was a day of press conferences at Gamescom in Germany today — always a long, tiring day, so forgive me if tiredness gets the better of me and I either start making ridiculous typos or fall asleep on my keyboard.

Out of the three conferences we saw today (or heard about second-hand in the case of Microsoft, who weren’t streaming their event), for my money, Sony’s was clearly the best. For my particular tastes, anyway.

What’s kind of cool, though, is that in each of the three cases — Microsoft, EA, Sony — there were clear target audiences, and while sometimes they overlapped, for most of the time they were very distinct from one another. This is good. This makes things exciting and interesting, and means we don’t keep seeing the same things over and over again.

The big divide seen today came largely between Sony versus Microsoft and EA. The latter put out huge, dubstep-fuelled trailers featuring lots of shooting and sports and other manly pursuits. The former opened the show with Shuhei Yoshida quietly playing with the console live on stage, closely followed by one of its least exciting games (Gran Turismo) accompanied not by dubstep, but with some rather stirring orchestral/choral music.

Microsoft and EA have their audiences — the people who enjoy their triple-A blockbuster experiences; the people who enjoy playing sports games; the people who are happy to play nothing but games with Battlefield in their title — and that’s cool. But it was even cooler to see Sony catering to its own niche rather than trying to emulate Microsoft. Some gorgeous looking independent titles; some solid support for the Vita; some intriguing looking exclusives — good stuff, and it got me far more excited than Microsoft and EA’s stuff. And that’s fine — I’ve long thought that various companies should specialise their output a little more rather than attempting to, as Jim Sterling so frequently mocks, “appeal to a wider audience”.

Interestingly, opinions have been a little split today. For the most part, my Twitter feed was enthusiastic about Sony’s conference while it was happening, but I’ve seen a few people expressing disappointment. Those who were particularly disappointed were either 1) in Microsoft and EA’s target audience, which is understandable because Sony very obviously aimed in the opposite direction, or 2) fans of Japanese games, of which there weren’t any on display. Still, there’s always TGS for the latter, at least, so it’s a little premature to worry about the PS4 — and I remain convinced that Sony platforms will remain the place to be for Japanese titles, especially if their publishing partners teased back when the PS4 was first announced are anything to go by.

Anyway. My eyelids are drooping so I’m off to sleep.

#oneaday Day 580: It’s 3AM, Of Course I’m Phoning It In

I’m back from Gamescom, highlighting the marvel that is the modern public transport system. This morning I was at Cologne Hansaring station, now I am in Cambridgeshire, UK, almost entirely thanks to public transport, which only let me down at the very last step of the journey as the supposedly 24/7 taxi firm was noticeably absent. (Thanks for the lift, Dad.)

German trains run impressively like clockwork. They’re regular and always on time, and once you figure out the confusing map of Cologne’s rail network (and the various variants of train available) you’ll find you can get pretty much anywhere in the city pretty easily. So long as you have a ticket and/or some change, of course.

Talking of change, I would like to take a moment to call out the Euro as one of the most irritating currencies I’ve ever handled. The notes are fine — the different colours make the different denominations easy to spot. But the coins are like well stupid innit.

The thing I like about English coins is that you can immediately tell how much money you’ve got from the colour and weight of your coins. Copper coins = rubbish. Silver coins = potentially OK, particularly if you have the big or oddly-shaped ones. Gold coins = sorted. The Euro, conversely, ditches the concept of silver coins in favour of its 10, 20 and 50 cent pieces looking almost identical (and gold) with such minuscule difference in size that you have to actively squint at them to work out whether you’re giving the impatient Currywurst salesman the right money. So the Euro can go do one, so far as I’m concerned. I guess you get used to it.

Now it is time to sleep. Back to “normal” work tomorrow, then signing the contract on new house this week, then moving all my crap very soon! That probably means I have to drive a van. I don’t really like driving vans. I’ve only done it twice in my life and it was unpleasant and a bit scary both times. But needs must and all that.

Ich gehe ins Bett. Guten Nacht.

#oneaday Day 579: The Littlest Hobo Journalist

I’m writing this sitting on a hard concrete floor outside a café because I’m using their Wi-Fi but I’m not confident enough in my German to go in and order something.

The fact that you can do this is pretty impressive, though. Laptops have been around for donkey’s years, but the ability to sit in another country, outside, on the floor, getting pins and needles in your legs, and access the Internet is pretty remarkable when you think about it. It’s certainly changed the way a lot of people can do their jobs. Journalists used to sit in offices, now they sit on the floor of German streets like netbook-wielding tramps. (Given the wild growth of my facial hair during my trip, that might not be an altogether inappropriate comparison. I’d shave, but I can’t be arsed at the moment.)

Gamescom is coming to a close, with today being the first of two days that are only for the public. The “entertainment halls”, as the public section is called, are markedly different from the relative peace and organization of the business area. Where the business area is clean, bright, not crowded and with no crap all over the floor, the entertainment area is the exact opposite in every sense. It’s dirty, dark, crowded and the floor is carpeted with discarded leaflets from a thousand different vendors trying to promote their products.

It’s interesting to see, though — having only really been to PAX and Eurogamer, there’s a marked difference in the way the public presentations are handled. For starters, rather than holding behind closed doors panel discussions like at PAX, game developers and publishers get up on stage and put on a show for the audiences right there in the show hall. There’s a lot of shouting, a lot of “call and response” audience interaction, and a lot of scantily-clad women flinging T-shirts into the crowd. I haven’t caught a T-shirt yet, but I did take advantage of the English language Guild Wars 2 presentation to sneak a go on NCSoft’s new WildStar MMO today — it’s really rather good and I suggest you check it out if you get the chance.

I never thought I’d say this, but I am tiring of sausage. Currywurst is awesome, and I really wish we had that curry ketchup easily available in the UK, but when sausage is the only kind of food that’s within easy reach (as appears to be the case once you’re inside Koelnmesse — easier said than done with the German security guards today bringing a whole new dimension of Jobsworthness to their interactions with the public) you start to tire of it surprisingly quickly, particularly when it appears to be a staple at breakfast time, too — honestly, I saw a guy yesterday having a plate piled high with nothing but about ten sausages. The guy obviously needed his protein.

I fly back tomorrow evening and I feel like I’m ready to. Cologne is nice and all, but I’m tired of being self-conscious about my German and the fact I don’t appear to know any nouns. It will be nice to have a rest in my own bed — but not for long, as very shortly I’ll be moving house, which is exciting and awesome.

For now, though, it’s time to go and find some food that isn’t sausage for dinner.

#oneaday Day 578: Booth Babe

Gamescom has been great fun so far and I’ve seen a lot of cool stuff, though it really drives home quite how sexist a lot of the industry still is, despite many positive steps having been taken and a lot of prominent females with important creative and business roles.

But still we’re cursed with the booth babe. Now don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against looking at a pretty lady in tight form-fitting clothing in an appropriate context (if there is such a thing), but seeing girls in hotpants and thigh-high boots promoting Kaspersky antivirus solutions just seems a bit weird, and seeing World of Tanks with a bevy of scantily-clad beauties outside compelling people to come and play just highlighted the fact that some aspects of the industry are still firmly entrenched in the mind of a 12 year old boy.

This even extended behind closed doors in the business area — I won’t name specific names (largely because it happened a lot) but many booths had attractive women in short skirts staffing their front desks, and it was clear in many cases that said women weren’t part of the software company’s regular staff — particularly when you got inside the booth and saw the actual female members of staff dressed, for want of a better word, “normally”.

I’m sure there’s a reason for the fact that this still goes on — perhaps there’s some deep-seated psychological reason that people will respond better to attractive women — but we’ve seen plenty of evidence, particularly in the last 5-10 years, that gaming is not a male pastime at all. It’s not a female pastime, either. It’s just a pastime, a hobby, something to do for both genders — and the way a lot of people, both male and female, make their living. So for the industry to exploit women — real women, not rendered, polygonal women — in this way leaves something of a bad taste in the mouth.

However, while features like The Top 10 Sexiest Booth Babes In The Universe remain traffic magnets for sites, the situation’s likely to continue. I know very well that if I spend tomorrow walking around the show floor taking photos of booth babes and then uploading them into a picture-heavy, word-light piece, I’ll likely create a day of spectacular traffic. But I find myself torn a bit between my own integrity and what makes, for want of a better term, “good business sense.” It’s all very well feeling like you’re taking a stand, but unless everyone does it it’s a largely meaningless gesture.

Maybe I’ll just hunt sexy cosplayers instead.

#oneaday Day 576: Still Tiredscom

I’m afraid you’re only going to be getting half-hearted (but still daily) updates out of me for the next few days, largely ’cause I’m spending my days at the Gamescom expo over at the amusingly-named Koelnmesse, then spending my evenings writing everything up. I’d write more stuff up in the daytime but 1) I don’t have time and 2) Wi-Fi access as Koelnmesse costs 25 Euros per day. You’d think during a trade show they’d organise something for attendees.

I’ve spotted a weird thing since being in Germany — my thoughts have a German accent. When I speak German, a German can immediately tell I’m English — they have a strange sixth sense for that sort of thing — but in my mind, the things I think have a perfect German accent and, in some cases, German words too. Occasionally they’re the wrong German words because I just end up thinking of amusing words or phrases (“Ich besuche mein Grossmutter” always makes me titter, even though what it actually means is rather mundane) but they’re there, nonetheless.

Wandering around a country that doesn’t have English as its first language is akin to playing an MMO with no keyboard. You might be able to make yourself understood with basic gestures, but after a while you’re going to have to immerse yourself a bit and figure things out for yourself. I’ve now just about deciphered the confusing public transport system (though since arriving here, not one person has checked my ticket, making me regret the 7 Euros I paid on the first day) and can sort of recognise what certain shops and things are.

However much I know that “Notausgang” means “Emergency Exit”, though, I still can’t not read it as “Not an exit”.

Feurwehr!