PAX West 2018

The guidebook is now available in the actual guidebook app instead of the crappy pax app.

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I just realized that PAX is happening and I’ve been so distracted that I forgot to arrange a hotel room. Does anyone have leads on a room with space? Preferably one where I could sleep in a bed.

Putting in PAX thread since it’s somewhat relevant, but does anyone remember what the discount was on an Elgato at their PAX booth? Was considering buying one for a stream I wanted to do by with PAX so close was considering waiting to see if they might have a discount there. But if it’s like $20 I might just buy now.

The Elgato I bought discounted at PAX years ago eventually completely failed. I would not recommend. Even when it did work, I often had to use the official Elgato software, which was crap.

On the other hand I bought an Aver Live Gamer Extreme, and it works amazingly. Way better than the Elgato ever did. Even though there is official Aver software, I never have to install it or use it. I only have to install the drivers and then use XSplit/OBS.

Maybe Elgato is better now. Maybe I just got a dud. Either way, I’m still going to recommend Aver based on my one experience.

I’ll def give it a look. My only requirement is I’d rather not have a pci card since I don’t have any slots left on my motherboard.

Get a USB3 one. Internal one is a bad idea.

What are you using them for?

Just curious. I have 1 video card, 1 firewire card… That’s it.

Well I partially lied, I do have one open right now but my 970 is big enough that it doesn’t provide much room to put anything in there, another one is taken by wifi card, which admittedly I could remove. I forget what is taking the other slot. Regardless though, I also don’t want to have to get behind my tower any time I want to switch out inputs. Given it’s current location it usually requires pulling it out far enough from this shelffor me to see what is going on.

So my initial plan failed on me so I will be doing nothing in Seattle on Thursday, anyone have a good spot or two for a first timer to go?

Pre-pax tabletop.

Or that charity dinner in the tower if they’re still doing it!

I have one full set of PAX West badges I will sell at face value. All or nothing: I’m not going to split the set.

I’ll post this on twitter later today, but I wanted to give the forum first dibs.

In the airport, the new adventure begins…

Having immediately read Random Images Megathread - #356 by Josh before reading this, my brain queued up

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwBjCKWaO_0

So how was it? Some reddit threads reminded me it just happened:

I played a bunch of new/favorite tabletop games, while the convention ambiently occurred around me. All my expo hall stuff was done on Friday, and I spent Sunday in Tabletop First Look, which was always full - but not so crowded you couldn’t sit down and play.

That first Reddit thread is a lot of people ageing out of stuff I avoided in the first place. They all lost a PAX I never had.

Yeah, I can see where those comments and feelings are coming from, but it also a natural evolution both by those of us attending for many years and what PAX is doing to keep up with the interests of today’s gamers. Mike & Jerry et al started as rock throwers at the industry who were given no attention now have a brand and show that the industry loves having a piece of. Of course every aspect of PAX is not perfect but I don’t think it is objectively/significantly worse than years past, it is just the current version. Other than buying a set of quality brass dice, nothing on the Expo floor interested me at all, but it has been increasingly irrelevant to me for years. But PAX is still worth attending because PAX is so much more than Expo.

Expo hall itself was never my thing at any convention. A few panels and a bunch of games always seemed ideal.

Personally I go to conventions for the panels. PAX for me is like the best parts of college classes.

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I can usually find one or two notable booths in Expo, not necessarily games I play but at least seeing something noteworthy that I will actually stop and observe for a while. Thinking of things like the Switch at PAX South 2017 or when VR started showing up in force a couple of years ago.

The panels, tabletop, and mingling with like minded people are the big draws for me.