FORT90

Oh Jesus, Tokyo Game Show is already old news, and I’ve yet to file my PAX and SPX reports! Time to fix that…

PAX Prime 2010

So, how was it? Truth be told, the whole shebang was a fairly mixed bag. For starters, I’m glad I can finally say that I’ve been to the new mecca for gaming dorks across the United States (with the previous one being E3, which I’ve still never been to, but considering all complaints about what it’s become, and not just from whiny game journalists, I’m no longer interested). But I was there primarily for Attract Mode related business, and on that end, things were not so rosy. Given how amazing Adam and I did in Boston, at PAX East, aka the B show, it only made sense that we’d do even better in Seattle, at PAX Prime, aka the A show. Well…

For a variety of reasons, sales did not meet expectations, with location being the prime culprit. In Boston we were right next to the performance area, which attendees couldn’t possibly miss on their way to the exhibition hall, even if they tried. Whereas this time our spot was some distant corner; still relatively close to where the action was, yet far away enough to not be noticed. Making matters worse was how there was literally 17 different entrances and exits to the expo space, meaning there was zero flow-through as it pertained to foot traffic. Better yet, the maps provided made absolutely zero sense; I can’t tell you how many friends and colleagues flat out could not find our table and simply gave up after a solid day or two of determined searching. It was impossible to locate anything overall; I wasn’t the one who kept going around in circles on the expo floor, at times desperate to find an exit (despite the aforementioned abundance of them) and panel attendance from was apparently abysmal as well because they too were difficult to find. Though maybe no one wanted to deal with the two hour wait for one, which seems to be the minimum at any convention these days. It just so happened that everyone thought the same thing!

Ultimately, the real nail in the coffin was the overall situation in bandland (home-base for all the musical acts, to sell merch and stuff, which we were part of). Most of our profits at East was made during the evening hours, when the exhibits were closed and the music was happening. Since we were once again right next door, Adam and I caught everyone who was milling about, especially those not into whomever was playing at that moment. Each night we were up till 2am doing business, and expected history to repeat itself. Meanwhile at Prime, because the show as a whole had become so big, all music moved off site to an opera house several blocks away. It would have made sense to be relocated as well, except for one reason: that other venue wanted a 33% cut of all revenue generated, highway robbery to say the least. So everyone decided to stick around the main convention center and see how that would go; Adam and I ended up closing shop around 8pm both Friday and Saturday nights, far earlier than planned (sure the console and pen & paper free play rooms were jam packed with folks till three in the morning, but those were even further away location-wise). At least one fellow exhibitor thought about setting up a tiny table outside the venue, on the street, yet nothing came of it I believe.

Well, since our evenings were free, did Adam and I try catching some of the performances then? Not really; aside from having the exact same line-up at Boston, that new performance space was tiny as hell, and because it was a place for “classy” music (it’s an opera house), all the seats were bolted down, making that party atmosphere everyone was trying to achieve almost impossible. Then you had all the technical issues, which were persistent throughout the convention; our only consolation was how almost everyone else directly connected to the event had an equally frustrating weekend. Still, in the end, we did okay, mostly due to the fact that our table was literally bursting at the seams with so much awesomeness, most of it brand new…

Highlights included the first Attract Mode related appearances of both my latest zine and Mathew Kumar’s, as well as the long-awaited North American debut of two from Japan, 8bit Love and 8bit Fighters… that brand new print by Katie, along with one for Canabalt, plus a pair from Corey Lewis… and let us not forget the ultra hawt Killer 7 shirt from Cory Schmitz! Which was the very first thing sold on day one, by a dude dressed as Travis Touchdown!

Watching the eyes bulge out of Grasshopper fanboys and fangirls when they first laid eyes on the tee and went “Wait, is that a Killer… OH MY GOD IT IS!” never got old.

So the show definitely had it’s heartwarming moments! Once again, Adam and I were the gracious guests of Two Player Productions, and we were more than happy to hock their wares, including the super fab, and just released on DVD, Reformat the Planet! It also meant a chance to hang with Paul Owens, along with Jenn De La Vega…

… She had with her a brand new, white DSi and man was I ever jealous. If not for the fact that I’ve purchased so many DSiWare games, and how they are not transferrable at all, I would have dumped my black model ages ago. Anyhow, back to cosplayers, despite our table being somewhat hard to track down, they still managed to find us. Highlights from day one include Leeloo…

Cloud from Final Fantasy 7 (not Advent Children or Dissidia, but most definitely the PSone original)…

Guile!

And because we were right next to Anamanaguchi, there was of course a steady stream of female admirers. Like this trio of Eva from Snake Eater, the new female protagonist from Persona 3 Portable, but as a cat, and her random catgirl pal…

Though easily the best part of the weekend, one that made up for any disappointing sales numbers, were all the awesome new friends I made! Had the intense pleasure of hanging and banging with Cory Schmitz, Jacob Ferguson, Corey Lewis, and Mar? Odomo pretty much the entire time. Here I am with the later two, aka my new b-fries…

Both Corey and Mar? were Attract Mode’s special guest artists; they autographed their awesome wares for customers, plus drafted promotional materials to help let everyone on the expo floor know where the hell we were…

In addition to sketching Pokemans in his mini comic, Mar? would also give you a tattoo upon request…

Easily the hardest sell was the hand-woven Eliss scarves, which cost about $80 a pop (but trust me, they are SO worth it). Here’s what it looks like (outside of its rather phallic looking container)…

… And here it is being modeled by Mr. Lewis…

Oh, so early on, there was this big box of donuts just sitting out in the open, on an empty table nearby. It was from Voodoo Donuts, which I’ve long heard of from small press pals who do Stumptown. How it randomly appeared at a video game convention in Seattle is anyone’s guess! Anyhow, we all helped ourselves and it most definitely lived up to the hype. But that was in the morning, as things were winding down in the PM, I rediscovered the box, underneath a pile of junk destined for the trash heap, and how there was still a few left inside…

… Which we all once again indulged in. Never-mind if it was essentially garbage, they were still fresh! And delicious. BTW, another food item that would also blow my mind that same trip was… hot dogs! Believe it or not, the best dogs can be found in Seattle, hands down. Previously, it was at assorted spots in Jersey; as excellent as some stands might be in NYC, for the most part, hot dogs here are fairly overrated.

Well, once Adam and I decided to call it a night (again, way earlier than expected), we continued our tradition established at Pax East by decompressing to some Disney Channel sitcoms at our hotel room. Afterwards, we rejoined our brethren at a nearby water hole; another fun part of PAX was constantly running into familiar faces that I normally only see at press events but in the wild, like Seth Killian from Capcom and Jennie Sue from 2K! Plus I finally got the chance to meet face-to-face Patrick Klepek from EGM (aka my new boss over there) and Jake Kazdal (aka the only gaijin to work on Rez, and whom I interviewed for Gamasutra, gosh, five years ago).

The highlight at the bar was Cory’s Dingoo, which he had fetched from home after hearing that I once thought about picking one up. And I still might! Then it was off to Anamanaguchi’s after party, at their hotel room. For whatever reason, running on a MacBook Pro was looping footage of Ary from band, shirtless and playing his guitar, from earlier that morning/afternoon…

… And thus was day one. Onto day two! Here’s both myself and Adam in the morning, ready for some action…

As expected, there were tons more cosplayers to be found on Saturday. Here we have a little sister from BioShock…

… With the best part being this…

Has there ever been a more unusual pair? Wicket the Ewok and Faith from Mirror’s Edge…

So another pal that was made at PAX was Andreas Tekus, who runs Greightbit, a Game Boy modification and circuit bending shop. He was brought onboard courtesy of the two Pauls, and was the perfect fit…

A look at some of the modded Game Boy and related hardware he had for sale…

… In all my years, I have yet to encounter a modded Game Boy Player! And as already noted, DMGs are not his only game….

… And here we have Jonathan Coulton checking out the Jedi keyboard…

Another popular item was the Loud Object‘s Noise Toys; folks simply couldn’t help but wonder what in the heck they were all about. Like this dude, who also was kind enough to share with the whole world what he was hearing. Or something like that…

Guess now might be a good time to hit the show floor? Truth be told, really didn’t test drive all that much, mostly due to the fact that I was having far much fun with the rest of the Attract Mode posse! That and how virtually everything was a two hour wait in line to play. Plus most of the offerings were not my cup of tea; you can forget about asking me what I thought about Duke Nukem Forever, since I didn’t care about it before, and sure as hell didn’t care about it then!

The only big publisher game that I was truly interested in was Rez 2, aka Child of Eden, which meant dealing with Ubi Soft’s stellar PR team (otherwise known as the Frag Girls, lulz). And as noted in the past, they all seem to hate my guts. Here’s an actual conversation that went down between myself and Boobie Soft Bimbo #34:

me: “Hi there! I heard that Child Of Eden could be found here?”

Frag Girl: [in a very annoyed toned] “Excuse me?”

me: “Child of Eden?”

Frag Girl: “Never heard of it.”

me: “Really? Because, you guys are publishing it.”

Frag Girl: “What?”

me: “You know, the new Q Entertainment game? By Tetsuya…”

Frag Girl: [starting to sound pissed off] “Who are you again?”

me: “Umm… I’m a game journalist…”

Frag Girl: [sounding like she wants to flat out punch me] “Who do you write for.”

me: “Gamasutra, GameSetWatch, Heay.com, EGM…”

Frag Girl: [sounding like she doesn't believe me] “It’s not here.” [then makes a phone call on her Black Berry, pretending I'm not even there]

… In the end, someone did indeed miss their flight or something, hence why it wasn’t on-hand as advertised and she wasn’t lying like I thought she was. But can anyone blame me for thinking otherwise?

Moving on, and regarding the big name games that were indeed on-hand, I certainly had fun watching people play the new Mortal Kombat…

I’d be far more excited over Yakuza 4 if not for the feeling that Sega will gimp the domestic release, once again…

Front Mission Evolved was a game that I had been interested in, since I’ve been getting into mecha games as of late, though a trusted source tells me it blows. Looked nice at least…

Final Fantasy 14 was also playable, and I have to wonder if every attendee was trying to create very Italian looking women on purpose or if it was a huge coincidence…

Not surprisingly, Disney’s set-up for Epic Mickey was quite grandiose, with actual Disney animators doing caricatures for attendees…

They also had this impressive light cycle display for Tron Legacy!

… Too bad the game itself looked like pure shit…

Another title that I was actually interested in was Marvel Vs Capcom 3, but the crowd was so big that I couldn’t snap a good pic. Instead, here’s a look at the Ghost Tricky display…

… Unfortunately, no one could confirm for me if those will be pre-order bonuses or not. And here we have Okamiden headphones, which one can actually purchase this sec according to one Capcom rep (though the vendor’s name escapes me)…

… Too bad they pale in comparison to the earbuds that they’re getting in Japan.

Hey, Lost In Shadow!

In one of the far corners of the expo was Pink Gorilla, Seattle’s biggest indie game specialty store, which deals heavily in retro and import goodness, plus assorted knickknacks like toys and figures. It’s basically the Pacific Northwest equivalent of Video Games New York, which is a staple of any fan convention here in the east coast…

… I casually mentioned to Corey how I bought a copy of Twin Bee Collection for the PSP from them while in San Fran two years ago, at Wonder Con, and he said how it could have been him who handled the transaction! He used to work for them, which explains why they host Seedless on their site!

And on the other side of the show floor was the always amazing Fangamer guys and gals. Here’s their prototype E tank mug that got a bunch of folks all hot and bothered…

Though what personally got me all excited was their iPad app that was used for credit card sales, as well as to keep track on inventory! God, Adam and I are SO jealous of how well they do things!

… Alright, I’ve hit my quota for pics for one blog post. To be continued (for the lazy types, or those unaware of the forward arrow at the top of this post, part two can be found here)!

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Alright, we’re almost there! As of this writing (around 3:30am, Eastern Standard Time), the total for the Babycastles Manhattan’s Kickstarter is at $4,874, just a little over a grand from our goal of six thousand dollars! And before going any further, a gigantic THANK YOU to each and every person out there who believed us worthy enough for a donation. It truly means a lot. Though I hate to say it, but that $6,000 amount is still not enough. How come? Let me explain…

And at this point that I should perhaps also reiterate some facts, for the new folks out there. Because this blog has recently gotten a considerable influx of fresh eyes (welcome btw), thanks to my R2-D2 as the ultimate gaming solution post getting picked up by Kotaku! Plus, a colleague of mine asked me to make the following post, mostly to serve as reference point that can be easily passed along. Which I’m more than happy to oblige with. So for those of you might not be familiar with it, I must ask:

Have you heard of Babycastles yet?

It’s a question I’ve tried answering already, but once again and from the top: Babycastles is a relatively new institution, but one that has made quite the impact during its short existence thus far. First and foremost, it serves as New York City’s one and only indie arcade! And as anyone involved in the game space here in the Big Apple knows already, we’ve come far in a very short amount of time. Aside from NYC finally becoming a force to be reckoned with in the world of game creation, something that many claimed would never happen to any significant degree, we’re also where groundbreaking game education takes place, where some of the finest minds in our industry are inspiring the next generation of creators at learning institutions across this great city.

Yet a serious problem persists; despite all advances and cool stuff going on, there’s still a serious lack of any real game culture to speak of. Your average Joe walking down 14th Street is blissfully ignorant of the wild and wonderful world that is indie gaming, and how much of it is happening all around already. Plus many of those who are involved have no real place to gather and display their creations, other than industry events that mostly other professionals only know about. The public needs to be included, somehow.

That’s where Babycastles comes in; at its home-base in Ridgewood Queens, at the music/performance venue Silent Barn, myself and others have been running shows in which a new crop of curated games each month have been wowing both hardcore and casual gamers alike, along with industry types. But don’t take my word for it; check out what others have been saying…

- Attract Mode: “The CBGB?s of Video Games”
- Rhizome: “New York DIY Arcade”
- Motherboard: “Where Punk Rock & Homemade Videogames Live In Sweet Harmony”
- bushwickbk.com: “At Babycastles, God Mode for Indie Gamers”
- LA Times: “In a Queens neighborhood, the birth of indie video games”

… And now we’re set to take Manhattan by storm! Starting in less than two weeks, and in conjunction with Showpaper, we’ll be running an indie arcade in the heart of midtown, down the street from Times Square and right next door to Grand Central Station. Some truly amazing programming has been lined up, including [note: the following are still tentative]: selections from both the Experimental Gameplay Project & the Independent Games Festival, Raina Lee & Attract Mode, Gaijin Games, Pixeljam, Eric Zimmerman & Nathalie Pozzi, Eddo Stern, student works from NYU, Parsons, & Columbia University, plus much more yet to be announced, including game related musical performances, film screenings, talks, and workshops.

Unfortunately, there’s one thing standing in the way of such a momentous gathering, and it’s finances.

Well, how can I help exactly?

As previously noted, we have a Kickstarter, and even though things are going okay at the moment, there’s still concern that the goal might not be met in the end. And the whole truth of the matter is, that $6,000 only covers the barest of expenses; mostly tech related, as well as materials for building exhibits and installations. To put in bluntly, having more money available will allow our artists to achieve their visions in a more complete and uncompromised fashion.

For starters, any amount of money would be profoundly appreciated. Nothing is too small, though I would like to point out the wonderful incentives we have available at a number of different donation levels, including download codes to hit indie games, signed copies of game zines, original artwork, and autographed copies of Katamari from the creator himself, Keita Takahashi, to name but just a few!

But just as vitally important (maybe even more so) is your help in spreading the word. If you would be kind enough to pass along our mission statement to your friends and colleagues, via blog posts, Twitter, and/or Facebook, the goal is sure to be met (and hopefully then-some). Furthermore, if you happen to be a member of the media, myself and other members of the Babycastles crew would be delighted to assist in any sort of coverage that might be possible for your outlet (personally, I believe both the fundraising effort, along with the simple fact that such a thing even exists is more than a little newsworthy). Plus there’s plenty of press materials to help get started, so please do not hesitate to ask.

I also cannot stress enough how legitimately historic such a public space for gaming in New York City has the potential to be. For years game makers and players alike have been lamenting the lack of serious game culture in NYC, which is capital of the world for pretty much everything else: film, music, acting, you name it. So the time is now to finally make a mark and let our presences be known. It’s also no exaggeration to say that the rest of the world is watching to see how Babycastles Manhattan fares; I’ve personally spoken with folks clear across the globe, as far as Japan and Australia, all hopeful that such an initiative will succeed to potentially inspire similar efforts on their own. Hence why anyone out there, specifically those who do not live anywhere close to New York City and might be asking why they should care, should most definitely still do so.

Thanks in advance for your time and any assistance you might be able to provide. Together we can help being indie gaming goodness to the island of Manhattan!

UPDATE, 4:25pm EST: This just in… IGN will be matching 100% of every donation until the deadline! For additional information, please check out this Gamasutra news item.

Not only that, but we have officially made our goal!!! This absolutely amazing, and once again a most sincere thank you to everyone that has helped thus far. Still, as noted above, that $6k only scratches the surface, so further assistance is required. But remember, any dollar amount you would be so kind to offer will be matched by IGN! Let’s make Babycastles Manhattan the biggest and best that it can be!

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