penny-arcade posts

As we enter the holiday season, Penny Arcade's Child's Play charity has begun its annual fund raising drive to help 70 children's hospitals around the world. Last year the charity had over $1.4 million in cash, toys, games and other items that were donated to the participating children's hospitals.

The drive has been in effect for just over a week but thanks to events held throughout the year the charity has already raised $250,000, which is a quarter of this year's goal of $1 million. In addition to individual donations, a number of events to raise money are being held all over the US and Canada. As usual the biggest event is the annual Child's Play Charity Dinner Auction where people can bid on truly one-of-a-kind items donated by the game industry. This year's auction is being held December 8 in Seattle and tickets are being sold now.

Thanks in part to the H1N1 scare, it's taken a little longer than normal for organizers of the Penny Arcade Expo to tally up the final attendance numbers for the 2009 edition of the show that was held last week in Seattle. However, today Big Download can exclusively report that PAX 2009 officially had 60,750 people show up at the show this weekend.

That's only a slight increase from last year's number of 58,500 attendees but it's important to note that this year PAX 2009 had a limited amount of tickets to sell due to concerns of overcrowding and safety from the show's venue at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center. All the previously alloted tickets were sold out a few days before the show opened. However, after the convention center saw how well PAX 2009 was handling the large crowds, they gave show organizers the thumbs up to sell a limited number of Saturday and Sunday day tickets, both of which quickly sold out.

In a quick phone chat today with Penny Arcade's Robert Khoo he told us that next year they hope to allow more people to attend the show due to some expansion plans that are taking shape around the convention center. And then there's PAX East, which is scheduled to be held in Boston in late March. Khoo told us it's still too early to say how many people will attend that event but that he's been surprised at the number of people who actually plan to come to both PAX shows in 2010.

It's not exactly a surprise to learn that at a three-day event where tens of thousands of people show up in relatively close quarters some people might come down with something. The official Twitter site for PAX 2009 has confirmed that a case of the H1N1 flu was discovered in one of the attendees at the show this past weekend.

In a brief phone chat with Big Download today, PAX organizer Robert Khoo stated that they wanted attendees to be informed of the confirmed H1N1 flu case which is why they sent out the info via their Twitter account. It's important to point out that while there is no current vaccine for the H1N1 flu it also doesn't appear to be any more dangerous than the common everyday flu. If you attended PAX you can find more info about H1N1, including common sense info on keeping healthy, at the Center for Disease Control web site.

You would think that the Penny Arcade Expo would be the perfect place for the web comic strip team and Hothead Games to talk about the long awaited third episode of Penny Arcade Adventures. But unfortunately it was not to be. Both Hothead Games reps along with Penny Arcade's artist Mike Krahulik told Big Download during PAX 2009 that they were not yet ready to talk about the third chapter in their downloadable adventure-RPG series.

There's apparently a good reason, however. Both Hothead reps and Krahulik said there should be news about the third chapter in the very near future that will clear up why there's been such a long wait for the game. Until that time we can all just hurry up and wait.

The Penny Arcade web comic strip team have created a number of online strips for various game publisher to promote their titles. Today, just before the start of PAX 2009, developer Bioware and publisher Electronic Arts announced that the Penny Arcade team will be doing exactly that for their upcoming fantasy RPG Dragon Age: Origins.

The first part of the comic strip is now online at the game's official web site with new entries in the strip for the next seven weeks. It will feature an original storyline that will tell the tale of a "dangerous encounter between a party of mage-hunting Templar knights, the reviled "Witch of the Wilds" Flemeth and her deadly, magic-wielding daughter Morrigan." In other words, this strip isn't supposed to be funny.

In just six years, the Penny Arcade Expo has grown from a small gathering of gamers and fans of the Penny Arcade web comic strip to the largest consumer video and PC game event in the US. And all of that growth has been done just with word of mouth and a desire for gamers just to have a lot of fun. Last year's event at Seattle's Washington State Convention and Trade Center brought in over 58,000 attendees. This year, despite the economic recession, the event sold out of all of its three day and single day tickets. And for those of you who couldn't make it to this year's event, PAX East in Boston will have its inaugural event in late March 2010 which is another testimony to the growth of the event.

Big Download contacted Penny Arcade's director of sales Mike Fehlauer to get more info about their plans for PAX 2009 and if they are ready for what will likely be the biggest Penny Arcade Expo yet

First, you guys made a decision to limit the amount of tickets this year for PAX 2009. Why did you decide to do that and has that been helpful for your planning of PAX 2009?

The cap was not our decision; after the enormous crowd last year, the convention center imposed a hard cap on badge sales. With the increased size of PAX 09--we've expanded to the 5th and 6th floors and now have the entire Center--we're confidant that the crowd will be more manageable since there's more room, and more stuff to do.

Riot Games has already announced that they will be showing off their upcoming free-to-play multiplayer action-RPG League of Legends at this weekend's Penny Arcade Expo. Today the publisher announced plans to offer a limited edition championship skin for the game for PAX 2009 attendees.

If you bought your tickets early you are likely in luck as the first 20,000 people who attend PAX will be able to receive a code to get the special skin created by the Penny Arcade web site creators themselves. In addition everyone who comes to the League of Legends booth will receive a beta key for the game. Riot Games will also show eight new champions for the game at PAX 2009; you can see an image of them after the jump. The open beta will begin later this month and the full game will be released on October 6.

[Via email press release]

If you were hoping against hope that there might be a few more tickets left for Penny Arcade Expo 2009 . . . you are officially out of luck. The event's official Twitter page has posted word that, "PAX 2009 is completely sold out!". The event still had a few Sunday only tickets left on Sunday but those are gone now.

So for those of you who didn't buy a badge for the event, to be held this weekend in Seattle at the Washington State Convention & Trade Center, the organizers have flat out said, " . . . please please please do not come to the Convention Center if you do not have a badge!". The good news? You don't have to wait another year to attend a Penny Arcade Expo; the first annual PAX East event is being held in Boston in late March 2010.

We are just over a week away from the 2009 edition of the Penny Arcade Expo and it looks like the annual get together of gamers, developers and publishers in Seattle could be the biggest yet in terms of new game reveals. This week publisher CDV announced that they will be showing Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter at PAX 2009. This will be the first time the graphical remake of Croteam's debut FPS will be shown in public.

CDV will also be showing a currently unannounced action-RPG title for the PC at PAX 2009. We have no idea what it is but CDV's note stated it is a "high profile" game. PAX 2009 will be held September 4-6.

[via email press release]

If you though you might be able to squeeze in a trip to Seattle to attend Penny Arcade Expo this year, you had better move fast to claim your spot. Earlier this year PAX organizers announced that they would be limiting tickets to the annual fan-themed gaming event and now the Penny Arcade site reports that tickets are almost gone.

According to "Tycho", only 400 of the three day tickets are still available (and that was posted up nearly 24 hours ago). There are also a "limited" number of passes for each day of the September 4-6 event but as he says, "we can't guarantee there'll be any left when you get there." Considering that last year's event was nearly as big, attendance wise, as the old E3 shows, the fact that they are nearly sold out shows that folks, even in a recession, still love their PAX.