Misty Water-Colored Memories of PAX East

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— I was on a panel about video games journalism. Scroll down, it’s on here somewhere. Two minutes before it started there were three people in the audience, and I thought, ‘yeah, that’s about what I expected.’ Then the Enforcers opened the doors, and 200 people shoved in. Cool.

I learned a ton. The other panelists — Chris Grant (Joystiq), Susan Arendt (The Escapist), Kyle Orland (Crispy Gamer), and Gus Mastrapa (everywhere) — were really brilliant and harsh and funny. I was just glad to be there, because people don’t always think of me as a gaming writer. My two major points were:

1) if you want to get into gaming journalism, get serious about writing. Read everything, and write all the time. A lot of people know a lot about games. Not many of those people can really write.

2) Gaming criticism is still in its infancy. We need a new kind of critical language for games, that isn’t borrowed from lit crit or movie theory, but is native to the medium. It’s up to us to build it.

— At one of the Q&A sessions, someone asked Mike and Jerry to arm-wrestle. Mike won. Personally I wouldn’t have called it that way.

— There was beautiful (sorry, that’s the only adjective that fits) room full of classic arcade games. I played Joust 2: Survival of the Fittest. Strange how the mere addition of a transform-into-a-pegasus button can make a great game into a totally boring one.

— I re-met MC Frontalot. Always an important thing to do. (I call him “Damian” now, because we’re such good friends.) I also met Scott Kurtz, who does PvP. Also important.

— Speaking of Kurtz (transition!) I went to the panel on Blamimations, which Kurtz does with Kris Straub (who took the photo up top). They are funny. The panel was wall-to-wall Doctor Quinn Medicine Woman jokes, so good stuff. They also debuted the catchprase of the coming decade: “If you need me, I’ll be in stellar cartography.”

You heard it here first. From PAX East, I’m Lev Grossman.

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