I was invited to attend PAX West in Seattle this year. I had always heard about attending one of the PAX conventions, so it was something I eventually wanted to see. The friend who invited me was someone I met through an online Twitch community and I had friends who live in Seattle who were interested in going, so there were additional reasons to go check it out!
I arrived in Seattle on Saturday night with plans to attend the convention on Sunday and Monday. The friend who invited me to go, nicknamed Corbz on Twitch, had been there since Friday and was staying until Sunday evening. I had met him through Stapus, a Twitch streamer that I met at
last year's Twitchcon. Saturday night we met up and hit up the bars in Fremont, which was a chill time getting to know him in person since we had only gamed online before this. :)
Sunday morning got a bit interesting. I walked to a local Starbucks, ordered a coffee, and called an Uber. The car pulled over to the sidewalk and as I approached to open the door, the driver immediately sped off. He drove off so fast as if he had just robbed a bank. I didn't even have a chance to enter the vehicle or communicate with them. This had never happened to me before and I began to wonder what set him off. Was it because I had a cup of coffee that he didn't want spilled in the car? Perhaps he was racist? It would've been pretty funny if he was racist because he was also Asian, albeit and an older man, possibly racist against his own kind. Regardless, I had to call for a Lyft instead to get to the convention. I then reported the driver to Uber and they awarded me $3 in credits for his behavior and hopefully he will not be working for them much longer. Still a pretty crazy start to the day.
I finally made it to PAX and I spent most of the day checking out the two main halls that feature all the big gaming companies. It was a lot like being at E3, but a little more organized and less fancy of exhibits. The highlight of the day was seeing the playable demo for Final Fantasy 7: Remake! There were a limited amount of tickets per day for people to try the game, but I was able to watch everything from the side. I am super excited again, as this has been a game I've been waiting for ever since
E3 2017.
On Monday, I met up with my former roommate Ben and his fiance Mel who were attending PAX West just for Monday. They spent a little time checking out the same two video game halls I saw the previous day, but then it was off to check out the board games! This is a nice change of pace that comes with PAX and there were so many board games on display. They even had ones you could check out and play if you had enough time.
Overall, I felt like PAX was a better experience than E3 and definitely more organized. I can't really compare it to Twitchcon because that is more for the social-networking aspect. Speaking of which, Twitchcon is coming up at the end of September and is my final out-of-state planned trip for the year for the time being. I want to thank Corbz for inviting me to PAX West in Seattle and it was really good to see Ben, who I'll be seeing next year again when him and Mel get married. :)
