You are right about the same acts year over year, when they were doing the double concert days I could have told you who 4/6 acts were almost every single time. Same for this year with the doubleclicks. There was a reason you saw a lot of PAX “regulars” at MAGFest Main stage this year.
You can’t give us JoCo and Paul and Storm for the first few PAX Easts and then take them away. I haven’t been to a concert there since they stopped coming.
I do not think it was a take them away, I think is was more “hey we do this cruise” instead.
I’m the exact opposite. I’ve seen them so many times, I never need to see them again.
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Fair, I’m just not there yet. I may even do the cruise someday.
And yeah, I’m also not assuming PA maliciously removed them from the lineup, of course.
I don’t think PA removed them. I think they decided to stop coming.
PAX used to be a con where most of the attendees came all weekend, and came every year. New people joined the fold and this core attendance grew. Then PAX hit the limits of the venues, and couldn’t grow any more. In a situation like that, the same acts every year means eventually no one will want to see them again and no one will go to the concerts.
Now, with the single day badges, a ton more people come for just a single day. There are new people at every PAX. You’d think “Great! Now that same act will always be fresh to enough people to fill the seats!”
But no. Most of the single-day attendees don’t have a hotel. They have to travel home. They leave PAX when the Expo Hall closes. They don’t return after dinner. They’re certainly not around at night.
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What we need are acts that are a bigger draw. It would be cool to have someone who is big enough that someone might buy a ticket to PAX primarily to see that concert, and then get a bonus PAX on the side. However, they obviously can’t be too big, or PAX will become nothing but a line where people are waiting for that concert to start. Problem is there are basicaly zero musical acts I can think of that fall into that space.
So in the absence of that I think PAX just needs to a better job of marketing its content to attendees. they are doing more marketing to sell badges, especially for the PAXes that don’t sell out, but once you buy a badge, that’s it. PAX XP is their only weak ass attempt to get people to explore PAX.
Once you’re at PAX there is nothing urging you to go to any particular content. The schedule treats all content equally. If you aren’t closely following PAX social media, you get basically nothing but what you see with your eyes.
Any content at PAX that isn’t popular enough with attendees relative to the resources required to produce it should have some kind of at-con promotion to help fill the seats. How many of those one-day PAX people even know there are concerts? Pretty sure a huge percentage think PAX IS the expo hall and that PAX and don’t even know that PAX goes until midnight.
In my experience, one-day PAXers barely know there are panels or even content outside of the Expo Hall.
Damn. They are sticking with the melty theme.
The PAX website is hot garbage, too. Does not do a great job of selling the weekend experience.
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To be fair, no one in the history of convention attendance has looked at the web site for a con unless they were already pretty deep into con culture.
Schedule is up
It appears that super art fight did so well that PAX is making an offbrand version of it. http://east.paxsite.com/schedule/panel/art-battle-east-2019
PAX isn’t making anything. Some other people submitted it as a panel and PAX accepted it.
It appears that the app finally has the schedule so go download it if you can. Also just realized there is no storytime/keynote speech this year, not sure if this is a blip or a trend.
At South they announced the speaker after the schedule went live, so it wasn’t on the schedule to begin with.
Jamspace schedule is live and that Friday lineup looks good
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In case anyone is still looking for a last-minute PAX hotel, we had 4 guys in our room at the Westin, but someone backed out and now we can take one more (possibly two). We are all the average PAXgoer level of awkward and nerdy, but confirmed not-evil, not-creepy and not-That Guy. We’re checking on on Wednesday and out on Sunday morning, so if you need a spot for all or part of the weekend, let me know!
Oculus will be there with lots of goodies people can try 