PAX 2017 Roundup

So I got back from PAX West 2017 last night.  I meant to write this up before my stream earlier, but whoops.  Anyway, I don't have this planned out, so I don't know how in-depth I'm going to go.  I'm probably mis-remembering some things, but we all know my memory is bad, so uh... whoops!  There will be a tl;dr at the bottom too.

Thursday:
Changed the oil in my car, had lunch with an old co-worker, got my hurr did, then drove out to Bellevue almost immediately.  The traffic was swell since I hit rush hour in the middle of literal nowhere, so no slow downs for me!  Once I finally finished driving, there really wasn't much to do.  Hung out in the hotel with Studio, spikevegeta and Adam.  Genuinely can't remember if we did anything.  spike and I were bunking together, and I recall waking up a couple times to him on my shoulder.  It was adorable.

Friday:
We woke up and desperately wanted Chick-fil-A, but the line was atrocious, so we skipped out.  Once we got to the venue, we lost Studio almost immediately after getting our party/partner wristbands.  I got to try a handful of games.  Super Mario Odyssey was really intriguing to play for me, especially since I haven't really played a 3D Mario game in quite some time; the last one I played for more than 10 minutes was a little bit of SM64, and I was awful at it.  I spent more time playing jump rope in the game than anything else.  I went out of my way to buy a pinstripe suit, go back to the jump rope section, jump to 69, then slowly walk away.  The Nintendo employee behind me got a good chuckle out of that.

I also got to play Super Meat Boy Forever and Shovel Knight King of Cards.  Shovel Knight was alright.  I think my perception of the game was a bit warped because the TVs they used introduced some input delay and that took away from the experience, especially in really platform-heavy sections.  Maybe a different set-up would've changed my mind.  Super Meat Boy Forever, though, was fantastic.  Myself, spike and Trevor all did a blind race of the entire available demo; spike won, but it was close in the end, which was surprising because I got SCHOOLED on the second level.  The seed I rolled (I'll get more into that in a sec) was just awful and it always takes me a while to learn/adjust to mechanics I'm unfamiliar with.  Going a bit into the seed thing, there are different combinations of obstacles in the levels that are generated upon entering the level, so each of us had different level layouts, which ended up balancing out our race quite a bit as it went on.  I can't emphasize enough how badly I did though; when I finally finished level 2, spike and Trevor were almost in the Dark World.  Super Meat Boy Forever was a fantastic play, though.  So much depth and strategy for a game with two buttons.  The artwork looked really clean and well done as well, so huge props for that.  The devs were also very into the race and very receptive of our feedback, especially Kyle Pulver, which is amazing.  I wish more devs paid attention to speedrunners' feedback and opinions, since we're the ones playing the game at levels beyond the average gamer.

Eventually, we all went back to the hotel to let bjw in the room.  I'd heard of bjw before but never had any interactions with him, but he's a pretty chill dude.  Glad I got to room with him.  After a round and a half of Chick-fil-A (this will be mentioned a lot; I love Chick-fil-A) and waiting for romscout to come by, we all took an Uber to the Twitch partner party.  It was held at the Seattle Aquarium, which made me skeptical at first but it ended up being amazing.  I got to meet even more people while I was there, which I feel awful because I can't remember everybody's names off the top of my head.  Ran into P4ntz and MiniKitty, which was pretty neat.  Got to hang out with MiniKitty for a decent chunk of PAX in general.  She's pretty rad but she bullies me a little bit :) .  The highlight of the party for sure, though, was this one drink we got.  One of the bartenders made a horrible set of cocktails so I went to a different one and asked her to make something tropical and sweet, so she made something called a Bomb Fusion.  Thing was DELICIOUS.  Like, otherworldly good.  She had just invented the drink that morning too, so it was dope as hell.  The gang got so many Bomb Fusions that we single-handedly drained the venue of pineapple juice.  Whoops.

Post-party was awful, man.  #fuckromscout.  He conned us into going to a diner and that place was poops.  This trio of middle-aged women called me gay because I draped my leg across romscout, which was hilarious, then it became awkward because they tried to justify themselves by saying they took a psychology course.  I don't need a psychology course to know y'all dumb.  bjw pissed them off so much though, it was amazing.  They were the perfect example of people trying to act hard but looking straight (hah) stupid.  Eventually we get seated with four other people from the party.  It took AGES to get served and get our food, and the food wasn't even that good.  Also spike is a racist, tell all your friends.

Saturday:
We woke up late.  Very late.  So late that we got around and went straight to lunch with everybody.  At that point in time, it was a pretty safe bet that our gang was going to be Studio, bjw, spike, MiniKitty, Trevor, Adam, Leslie, Chelsey and myself for most of PAX.  Neat people.  When we got back to the venue, we went back to Super Mario Odyssey; the demo had two level options, and spike and I wanted to try out more of the game.  After getting chewed out for waiting near the line and staring at it (like, what??), we all held hands/linked arms and blitzed the line as soon as we were allowed.  Somehow, someway, a generic NPC squeezed his way in-between us all.  The line was mega cramped and spike essentially buttsexed me for most of it.  Maybe those middle-aged women the night before weren't wrong bahahahaha.  Not really much else to say about the game, we just tried out new stuff.  Afterwards, we all went back to Super Meat Boy Forever and tried to see how much better we could do at it.  Spoiler: we did better.

I actually forget what else I did at the venue that day.  All of us minus MiniKitty ended up going to Game Works later that night, which is a big barcade.  The drinks were far too expensive, and some of the machines were uncooperative.  When we were finally done, the boys ended up going back to the hotel room.  We had gotten some alcohol but hardly touched it and most of us just called it a night.  I actually stayed up until either 5 or 6 AM watching Catfish on MTV.  Can't believe I got that invested into it, haha.

Sunday:
Burger King is awful.  Like, so awful.  Really, really awful.  More Super Meat Boy Forever.  spike ended up dragging me up to the 6th floor to try out Celeste.  I actually completely forgot Celeste was there (like I said, terrible memory), so I'm really glad he brought it up.  I was blown away by Celeste.  I had so much fun playing it.  The gimmick and the mechanics behind the game were amazing, the soundtrack was very well done and I never got tired of hearing it even as I struggled figuring out optimal ways to clear rooms quickly.  I even found the most useless clip!  Matt and Noel were a treat to talk to as well.  Probably the game I'm most looking forward to coming out.  We also played some weird bullet hell music game thing.  I sucked at it, bjw was a god, Trevor was really good as well, and spike was... spike.  I got to meet a couple more people as well, like KrisMarqs and his lovely girlfriend.

After running to get some food, we had our panel.  The panel was a lot of fun, but I definitely talked less this time compared to last year.  The panel consisted of romscout, Studio, bjw, spike and myself, and we showed off a couple speedruns and had a long Q & A session.  I played Animorphs, and the crowd was SUPER invested into it.  I've never seen anybody so into such an awful game.  It was also pretty cool because a couple of my real life friends came to the panel and got to see a bit of my life on display.  They also gave me a couple Monday passes, so I gave them to Kris.  I'm really hoping we can continue to snag a panel at every PAX West, or maybe I can go to other PAX events and participate as well.

I take back #fuckromscout.  He took great care of us after the panel.  Really fun night.  At one point in time, I had to rescue my car from a parking garage, so I dragged bjw and MiniKitty with me to the garage so I wouldn't get mugged alone on the way.  I broke a revolving door and proceeded to get chewed out by an ex-military woman.  I felt like such a child.  I was a bit sad because I didn't get to say bye to Leslie or Chelsey; was too busy breaking down doors.  Eventually, the room + Trevor went to Jack in the Box.  Yet another mistake.

Monday:
bjw and spike had to leave early.  Studio and I barely checked out on time (we were actually late, but whatever).  Got some Chick-fil-A.  Lost Studio at the venue again.  Ended up finding Kris in the partner lounge and Adam came our way.  Kris took me to the Discord lounge, which I didn't even know existed to be honest.  Went to Super Meat Boy Forever again.  Said goodbye to Studio (while eating more Chick-fil-A).  Went to Celeste again and had a wonderful long talk with Matt and Noel, and even got offered a chance to play test the game when it gets a bit closer to release.  Oh, if you're somehow reading this Katie [FIXED, THANKS PHONE], I remember you said you'd get me the game for my birthday ;) .  I can't emphasize enough how much I'm looking forward to playing and eventually speedrunning Celeste.

We went to Hard Rock Cafe for a final dinner, in which a cook quit mid-shift and ruined the flow of the whole dinner service.  Unfortunate, but it happens.  At that point in time, we started saying our goodbyes, but not before I backed into a pillar in the parking garage.  It was in my blind spot and nobody else in the car seemed to notice the pillar was there either, so I don't feel TOO stupid, but I still feel stupid.  Conservative estimate on the amount of damage I did to my car is ~$1300, which is actually enough to total it even though it runs perfectly fine and is still street legal.  That really put a damper on my mood, though, and really strains my finances if I want to get it fixed.  Such a sour note to end my trip.

This trip made me realize how much I love meeting new people and making new friends, though.  I'm really sad that I'm not going to TwitchCon, because a lot of my new friends are going and I'm also starting to learn the value of networking as a full-time streamer.  I need to get better at it.  I'm already in the process of taking care of business cards for future events.  I'm not sure how I could afford it at this point in time, unless I mega sellout or somebody drops some mad glorious bombs during a stream.

tl;dr:
- Trip was very fun until the very end due to car.
- Made a ton of new friends.
- Celeste is my #1 game, with Super Meat Boy Forever a very close #2.
- Help me go to TwitchCon keizaThump