penny-arcade-expo posts

They warned us beforehand that tickets were going fast and now people who wanted to spend all three days at PAX East but didn't buy their tickets are now out of luck. Penny Arcade Expo's business head Robert Khoo updated his Twitter page with word that, "We're 100% sold out of 3-day badges folks." He added that one day tickets are also close to selling out, saying "Saturdays are next to go with under 1,000 left."

Again this is pretty extraordinary considering this is just the first year for the East Coast version of the Penny Arcade Expo. The Boston based event will be held on March 26-28 and it's looking like the first year of the show could equal the attendance of last year's Seattle PAX event of 60,000.

[Via Joystiq]

While the official PAX East web site has not yet posted up this info our sister site Joystiq have gotten word of the first exhibitors and musical guests that will be attending the inaugural event in Boston in late March. The exhibitor list, which is still not yet complete, is pretty impressive for a first time expo. Publishers and developers like 2K Games, Microsoft, Rockstar Games, Sega, Turbine and Ubisoft will attend as well PC hardware companies like Dell and Nvidia. Musical guests will include folks like Jonathan Coulton and MC Frontalot.

There's still no word on what other activities and panels will be held at PAX East but if you want to go make sure you get your tickets now before they are all gone. Oh, and one more thing; Joystiq will be holding a special PAX East event. Here's a hint; food is involved.

We are now less than two months away from the launch of PAX East in Boston but the fan-oriented game convention is already expecting a huge amount of people to attend the inaugural event. Even though no panels, speakers, exhibitors or musical guests have been officially announced yet, our sister site Joystiq reports that PAX organizers are expecting even more people to attend the first PAX East than attended 2009's PAX in Seattle last August.

That means the final attendance figures could turn out to be over 60,000 people (although those numbers won't be known until the show is over). Indeed Joystiq reports that there are now less than 1,000 three day tickets available to purchase. Remember, PAX organizers have already said they don't expect to sell any tickets at the door during the event. So if you really want to be at the first PAX East ever you had better not waste any more time.

They are some of the most powerful people in the game industry but for the most part they are still more like fans than professional game creators. They are the folks behind the web comic strip Penny Arcade and its many different side projects. Today the Game Developers Choice Awards announced that the web comic strip's team of Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik, along with their business head Robert Khoo, will receive their Ambassador Award during their ceremonies at the Game Developers Conference in March.

The Ambassador Award goes to a person or group of people who "helped the game industry advance to a better place, either through facilitating a better game community from within, or by reaching outside the industry to be an advocate for video games and help further our art." The Penny Arcade web comic strip began in 1998 and started a massive sub-industry that has including forming the popular Penny Arcade Expo, the hugely successful Child's Play charity drive and most recently the development of the episodic Penny Arcade Adventures game (and how about that Episode 3, guys)?

Last year in Seattle, the folks running the Penny Arcade Expo sold out of tickets just before the show opened. With just two months to go before the first PAX East event in Boston, the organizers are already letting people know that if they wait too long, they might not get a ticket to the inaugural gaming expo event.

The official PAX web site is warning people now that, "If you want to go to the show, now is the time to register." Why? Because at the rate the tickets are selling they will be all gone before the event. That also means there will also be no way to pick up a badge at the event itself. If you can't go, don't worry. Big Download already has plans to cover PAX East in all its glory. Meanwhile we should learn more about what's happening at the event in a few weeks.

Penny Arcade Expo's first east coast event is getting closer and closer and if you want to get in on the cheap in Boston, you have until the end of the day today to register and buy your tickets before they go up in price tomorrow. PAX East 2010 tickets are $25 for each day or $45 for all three days. The event is being held March 26-28.

While the organizers have yet to reveal any exhibitors or a schedule of events for PAX East, a post on the main Penny Arcade web site states they are looking for more "Enforcers" (their friendly term for PAX volunteers) to help out at the show. The reason is "due to the incredible response to the show" which likely means that ticket sales have already exceeded expectations.

They began by just writing and drawing a game-oriented web comic strip but Penny Arcade has since grown into hosting a massive game expo, orgazising a children's hospital charity and even helping to develop games based on their strip. Now they have moved into their next venture with the launch of the PATV web site.

In short the site hosts original videos related to games. The first show is (surprise) Penny Arcade The Series with each episode following the two creators around as they do what they do. Other shows made by others are on the way. In fact the first one, Blamimations!, is live now.

In related news, The Child'sPlay web site has revealed that the 2009 donation drive has now exceeded $1.5 million in donations, a new record for the charity that helps children's hospitals around the world.

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.

Just like E3, PAX 2009 is filled with people dressed in costumes. While PAX's official policy is to discourage exhibitors from having booth babes, we noticed a few exhibitors who did bring in some ladies in costume. However they were vastly outnumbers by the regular PAX attendees who wanted to dress up like Mario or a Team Fortress 2 character class or a zombie nurse.

We went around the exhibit hall area to check out both the booth models and the cosplayers who showed up. Some of the costumes were very inventive and others . . . well, let's just say they need some work. Ironically we also saw people who wanted attention outside the PAX 2009 convention center. A few folks were standing around asking people if they could give up their PAX badges.