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In the early days of AVCon I remember the wonder of sitting down and playing games with strangers. Finding people that loved the same games, finding a worthy contender to battle with. In my involvement with AVCon over the last few years I’ve tried to remember and recreate this feeling.

However as video games have gotten bigger and better, the novelty of attending a con or a LAN to play with others has worn off. More games now facilitate online play with our friends – and we can do it any time of day, any day of the week we please. It feels as though over time that there are less people “Looking for Group”s to game with at AVCon. The magic of finding strangers to play with has faded – it’s no longer something that we can’t get from the comfort of our own living rooms.

But PAX recaptured that magic for me – in its tabletop section.

As our video games have migrated to incorporate online play, board games have quietly remained in our homes. Sure, there have been some great online interpretations and implementations of games, but the interface is entirely different. So it was in the tabletop section at PAX that I was able to revisit the experiences of wonder and joy I’d had at my early AVCons.

We spent most of our free time in the tabletop section over the PAX weekend and it was wonderful. The huge library of games aside, there was great thought put into the various “looking for players” signs that people could grab to attract other interested players. And everyone in the tabletop section was interested in sharing their favourite games with other attendees.

My brief visit to the Mike and Jerry Q&A also addressed the huge board games presence at PAX – board games are games! When an audience member asked Mike and Jerry what the defining game was for them that got them hooked on videogames was, Jerry answered with, “chess”. Board games undeniably belong at an eventlike PAX and I can only wish that one day we can begin to reintroduce(*) them to AVCon.

Anyway, board games at PAX were a stand-out feature, but I also had great fun being an Enforcer. I think CFP might have been my “welcome home” moment – working in that section felt so comfortable and right. I loved my fellow enforcers and I loved our area managers.

Another highlight was being able to play lots of Tetris DS! Over the weekend I took some Tetris challenges and gave out some of the surplus UG tokens that I’d converted into pins. I even managed to trade some of the pins away for some neat stuff, including at least one official Pinny Arcade pin and a nifty Mario coin. I very much enjoyed some of the 4v1 Tetris I played with my fellow enforcers 🙂

Thanks to PAX for providing such an awesome experience. There’s no question about whether we’ll be back next year – we’re counting down the days already. Just give us a date!

* Early AVCon events featured roleplaying and board games including the Doom board game. In recent times we’ve dipped our toes into the TCG/CCG scene.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled duck programming.

Choosing which photo to use for my last Duck-post was pretty tricky! I wanted to pick something with a bit of a story behind it.

This one fits the bill (hehe) but unfortunately it’s not a great photo.

This was taken on the morning of the AVCon @ OzAsia event we held last year. I had to run off-site to find a power adapter for our composite to HDMI converter. Driving out from War Memorial Drive I almost ran over this wood duck. He was visibly distressed and warking (wood ducks don’t quack, they wark) in the middle of the road and wouldn’t budge. If I had a little more time I would have probably stopped and tried to help him but perhaps it was better for both of us that I didn’t bother, I’d likely only add to his distress.

Silly kitty! Ticket to Ride is for peoples.

NO U CAN’T HAS MEW YORK.

Ducks + John = squee?

Invader pyramid.

The prototype for these stamps was created at the AVCon Ball in June. We needed a way for people leaving the venue to be identified on their return and the German House also wanted to have a way of verifying people eligible for the discount schnitzel offer.

As the idea of making an invader stamp was something that had been bouncing about in my head for a while, I figured I’d give it a shot. I borrowed a Stanley knife from the Streetgeek folks and rustled up a regular ol’ eraser and knocked up the stamp in five minutes or so.

Without a stamp pad this first stamp didn’t get us very far (we were using a Sharpie to ink it which eventually dried enough that the transfer stopped working) but it did prove that the idea could work.

For the Indie Games Room component of the Ultimate Gamer qualifiers we had to provide the developers with a way of verifying that attendees had passed the challenges associated with their game. It was time to make some stamps en masse…

I spotted this huge group of wood duck adolescents one Friday afternoon. In the twenty or so ducks there, only one really stood out as doing parenting and watch-guard duties. Poor guy.