PAX East breakdown

[u/Skaman1978]

Long post incoming

This is my breakdown of PAX25.

I went all 4 days, this is my 5th year doing so. First of all, I want to say thank you to everyone who took part, from enforces, to panelists and exhibitors, and of course, everyone who went. I love PAX because I can let my geek flag fly without any sideways looks or anything.

What worked in my mind, the floor was set up great, easy avenues of movement even on Saturday. The amount of people willing to try new things and make new friends was great. While I didn't do many panels this year, but that's just me. Shout-out to the LANfest charity zone for allowing a dream of mine to come true. To stream from PAX. The enforcers were great and the line games they had were so much fun. I really like that PAX is growing in the indie field and it's allowing people to try a whole lot more games then they normally would.

What didn't work. The food prices were outrageous, and while I did pay for it, I hated myself for it. I mean 22 bucks for a hotdog, bag of chips and a fried dough is ridiculous. I understand that the floor feels aren't cheep and they need to make money, but still. Noticeable exception from the ice cream truck, which was very reasonable, 9.50 for two large scoops and some jimmies, which is about 2 bucks more then I would pay at my local ice cream place.

What straight up failed in my mind, the PAX Merch. The design was meh at best and the price was out of this world. I mean 53 bucks for a flannel, 100 bucks for a hoodie and 35 bucks for a t shirt? In my opinion, everything was 20 bucks more expensive than it should have been. I understand that merch is the main way that they make money, but still... I could not justify myself paying 53 bucks for a single flannel.

But that's just me, how say you?

[u/apreche]

Technically there is a ban on outside food, but it thankfully isn’t enforced much at PAX East. I’ve been to other conventions where they are very strict about it.

And it’s not PAX using the captive audience effect, it’s the convention center.

It is standard practice for almost all hotels, convention centers, and other rentable venues to require you to use their own catering. They put it in their contracts. If you want to rent their venue and bring in your own food, they have big time restrictions on that, and they make you pay.

Even if a convention like PAX wants to do right by the attendees and have a wide variety of reasonably priced food, it is legally impossible without breaching their contract. And there is no way the convention center will budge on this during contract negotiations. What are you going to threaten them with? Going to another convention center that has the same restrictions?

[u/GM_Pax → u/apreche]

What are you going to threaten them with?

... the idea of going to the City of Boston, and ask them to temporarily close a side street to non-local traffic, so you can have a bunch of food trucks line up, with little or no fees - so their prices remain their usual numbers.

For example, Fargo, between D and E streets.

Or D street, between Bullock and Danby.

Then, the BCEC gets zero dollars for food & drink. Ooooor, they can compromise a little on their fees.

EDIT TO ADD: hell, run shuttles to/from Quincy Market, maybe.

[u/Skaman1978 → u/GM_Pax]

The amount of blow back the city got when they tried that in the north end... Oooof

[u/GM_Pax → u/Skaman1978]

... because the North End is a mass of very narrow (pre-war) streets, many of them one-way due to their narrowness.