My, Admittedly Brief, Time as an Omeganaut

While I’m happy to share this article with everyone, it really has an audience of 20. Well, 19 I guess. One of you has been there before.

At PAX 2009 I was one of the few, the lucky, the Omeganauts. I had been reading Penny Arcade since ’99 or 2000, so I felt it was time to make the trip up to Seattle. I also wanted at least one big, crazy college trip. I had never really done anything that interesting for spring break. Although I had gone to Quakecon a few times, Dallas isn’t exactly far enough away from Oklahoma to brag about, drunken shenanigans or not.

Several friends had been in 2008 and raved about how awesome it was. I signed up the week registration went live, but didn’t think about it too much for a while. After all, PAX was still a few months off.

I was lying in my room half-asleep, watching some MST3K episode and generally being bummed out about being broke because I couldn’t find a summer job when I got a call. It was an unlisted number, but I’m not an overly paranoid douche so I answered anyway.

The voice on the other end said, “Hey, this is Gabe from Penny Arcade.”

The next few minutes are kind of hazy, but I remember him asking me if I was still going to PAX, if I would be there all three days, and upon confirming those two, if I wanted to be in the Omegathon.

I stammered out something along the lines of “Of course.” He congratulated me, and then hung up to give the other contestants a call.

I sat there, staring at my wall for the next 15 minutes trying to convince myself that yes, that did just happen.

For those that aren’t aware how it works, the Omegathon is a contest held each year at PAX where 20 contestants (19 at random for pre-registered attendees like me and the runner-up from the previous year) compete in a videogame competition for fabulous prizes. This year it was an all expenses paid trip to the Tokyo Game Show and $5000. There are several rounds of games from all genres (from Jenga some years to Halo 3: ODST, three week before it came out, this year), eliminating contestants until the one-on-one finale on the main stage. The final game is never announced until the contestants get up there, so there is no way to practice for it.

I spent the next few week training at the few rounds they announced: Mario Kart, Bookworm Adventures, Halo 3 (because ODST wasn’t out yet), Connect 4, and Rock Band 2 (as a substitute for Beatles Rock Band, which they didn’t announce but everyone saw coming from a mile away). I spent the most time on Bookworm Adventures. If you haven’t ever played it yet, you should check it out. It’s a weird mix of Scrabble, Bejeweled, and an RPG. I was a little mad to learn it doesn’t take dirty words though. Seriously, “cunnilingus” would have been worth a ton if it counted it.

Get me out of Tulsa

Anyway, the Wednesday before Labor Day I packed up my stuff, checked my sylibi one last time to make sure I wasn’t missing anything in the couple days of class I’d be skipping, and headed over to a friend’s house to crash for the night before our 6:30 a.m. out of Tulsa bound for Seattle.

There were six of us making the trip: Four who went last year, me, and one other new guy. I had Omeganaut status, and three of the four second-timers had press credentials (two of them legit), so we were looking forward to abusing that to its full extent to skip past some of PAX’s notoriously long lines.

We made it to the Tulsa airport in plenty of time for our flight, and even a rain delay didn’t keep up from making our connection in Denver. On the second leg of out flight we met a girl, also on her way to PAX, but her trip was a little more business oriented than ours. She was hired to be a booth babe for Namco.

What surprised me most was how big of a gamer she really was. Now, there’s nothing wrong with liking Halo or Super Smash Bros., and I’m not suggesting in any way that being female precludes her from being a gamer, but when you start talking about playing an imported copy of Puyo Puyo on your Saturn, color me impressed. Thinking back now I’m even more impressed. Especially after hearing one of the girls at the Duke Nukem Forever booth last year ask, and this is a direct quote, “So, is this a game that hasn’t come out yet?”

After arriving in Seattle, and making sure the $40,000 plus camera belonging to a certain network affiliate wasn’t damaged by the lady who was convinced that if she just shoved a little harder her bag would fit in that overhead bin, we worked our way through the airport, making note of all the announcements being in both English and Japanese.

We finally found our checked bags and headed for the bus station to catch a ride to our hotel downtown. We passed the time by asking the lone girl in the group, a writer for Gamer’s Intuition, why her press stuff still said Grrl Gamer on it.

Apparently, the editorial staff had an argument over some design changes with the owner/founder and she “took her ball and went home.” Thus, Gamer’s Intuition was born, and due to all of this happening too close to the press filing deadline, she had credentials, but for a site that no longer exists. Although none of us wanted to sound sexist, no one was really surprised that Grrl Gamer ended in a giant drama bomb.

We finally got to our hotel and checked in. What followed may very well be one of the coolest moments of my life. (Which is kind of sad, but I digress.) We got into our elevator, and before the door closed, heard someone say “Do you have room for me and my giant bags?”

I turned around and there was Wil Wheaton. I didn’t have my camera out, so this picture I found online will have to do:

Oh come on, I can find something better and more recent than that:

There we go! Now, where was I? Oh yeah, elevator.

Wil fucking Wheaton. In MY elevator! I was speechless.

Finally someone in the group spoke. “So, what panels are you on this year?” Sure, it was kind of wasted, because the schedule could have told us that, but at least no one did anything completely stupid. And now we knew which floor he was staying on…

Into the closet

Still completely geeking out over Wil, we wound our way down the hall to our rooms, which we discovered were in what looked like a closet. The door from the hall opened to both rooms, but there wasn’t any good marking on the door itself. Just a key reader at the end of a hall where, by number, our rooms should be.

The view was great. Downtown Seattle from 23 stories up.

After dropping everything off in the rooms, we headed out to get our passes. The press people still had to pick theirs up, and I had no idea what the Omeganauts were supposed to be doing. The volunteers were quite enthusiastic, mainly because no one else was signing in yet.

After our press crew got their stuff squared away and I was informed that no one had any idea what I was supposed to be doing, we went in search of lunch. We wanted somewhere good and local, and managed to stay mostly away from chains for the trip. Well, except for Red Robin before the Saturday night concerts, but that was more out of necessity than anything else. We decided to check out Von’s before heading over to Gameworks for the afternoon.

Gameworks blew me away. It was amazing to see an actual, functioning, up to date arcade again. The place is owned and run by Sega, but they had a great selection of stuff, old and new, and even some cabinets not otherwise available in the US (to the best of my knowledge anyway). It was great to see Street Fighter 4 where the franchise started and not just on a (admittedly impressive) home-port.

Most of the evening is a bit of a blur, but our stop at Umi Sake house was… interesting to say the least. Everyone else in the group had a great time. The place is amazing, but I was just out of it at this point. I had only gotten an hour and a half of sleep in the past two days, I was worn out from the long day of traveling, and I was a large Kirin and quite a bit of sake into the night’s festivities.

I started feeling weird, getting the sweats. I headed to the bathroom. Maybe splashing some water on my face would snap me out of it. But then it hit me. As I opened the door to the bathroom I knew I was going to hurl. I burst in the door, ran for the stall, but still made a mess of things. Alcohol may have had the assist, but that was the only time I’ve ever thrown up due to stress. I cleaned up and got out of there, trying to play it off cool back at the table. I don’t think I fooled anyone.

After that escapade I was ready to just call it a night, but the group had other plans. Due to our press connections, we managed to get into Activision’s pre-PAX party. It was pretty cool, not only checking out stuff early, with an open bar to boot, but also because Activision wasn’t showing anything off to the public at PAX that year. No booth at all. No Modern Warfare 2 I can understand; the game couldn’t have had any more hype if they tried. But I was surprised that they chose not to promote anything.

The first thing I saw when we walked in was Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2. It was pretty fun, but I managed to get a filing cabinet stuck in a random enemy’s torso. Not the most polished game ever.

I noticed N’Gai Croal talking with some journos, probably about what to do when they get canned (or agree to a buyout, whatever).

The only other game of note was Tony Hawk’s Ride, complete with the “skateboard that’s not really a skateboard” controller. It actually controlled kind of well, and the board looked durable, but something bothered me. There is product placement that adds to a game’s authenticity, like Vans or DC shoes. Then there’s making the entire menu system from your game a T-Mobile Sidekick. And no, that is not an exaggeration. You navigate through the menus using a T-Mobile Sidekick. It’s like the game was designed by a stoned accountant. I’m not sure if I should be mad at the Michael Bay level of whoring out for your sponsors, or just impressed.

It begins, for $10

A little later we bumbled back to our hotel, and I tried to get some sleep before the start of the Omegathon the next morning.

I woke up and stumbled down the block to the Washington State Convention Center to try and find out where I was supposed to be meeting up for the Omegathon.

I found the info desk on the 4th floor and asked where I was supposed to be. They told me to check Twitter, but I couldn’t get it on my phone up in Seattle (thanks Pioneer Cellular!) and the Sheraton was trying to charge $10 a day on top of their already pricey (but nice) room. Seriously, that was free at the Days Inn I worked at. Why do all the little things sky rocket in price once you go somewhere that doesn’t have guests asking for hourly rates? I’m not paying $10. You pay $10!

After several minutes of waiting on phone calls to be returned, I was informed that I needed to go back down to the street, wait across from the Cheesecake Factory, and eventually the guy’s cousin Rey Rey would “have what I need.”

Ok, so I made the part about Rey Rey up, but it still sounded a little shady.

As I was waiting I saw Altair and Neo talking while Mario was crossing the street in the background. This isn’t something you normally see, but at PAX it is.

I eventually found the confused looking group of people and their “plus ones,” or official sidekicks that also got line cutting privileges, presumably in exchange for carrying their crap all weekend. I still hadn’t picked mine, but the plan was to rotate between the two other people in the group without any sort of Super Best Friends Club® pass.

We moved into the lobby (why we didn’t just meet there in the first place…) and they handed out our passes while we waited on the last few Omeganauts to arrive.

We walked up to the Serpent Theater (as the generic meeting room was renamed for the weekend) to get ready for the first round, Mario Kart: Double Dash. They had originally wanted Mario Kart Wii, but due to bass-ackwards network design on Nintendo’s part, there was no way to set up the matches to eliminate the appropriate number of players from the first round.

We took a picture with Gabe and Tycho (which I still don’t have a copy of), then had about 45 minutes to cut into the exhibitor room before the general public got in (and our round was supposed to start).

I walked around the show floor for a few minutes, trying not to freak out over the upcoming round, and played a few minutes of Scribblenauts. The woman running that part of the booth saw my badge and congratulated me. She told me she had been an Omeganaut in a past year and got weeded out by Jenga. I remember thanking God I didn’t have to play that.

My time was about up so I made my way back to the competition to pair up. The next half hour is a blur. I remember doing an entrance interview, and putting a mic on for our group’s press people, but I barely remember the first of the three races happening, except that we got 4th.

The second race will haunt my dreams forever.

It ends, with Mario Kart

We were running well in first place on Dry Dry Desert in the final lap when…the horror. It happened next to the sand trap. We got blue shelled, then immediately red shelled, knocking us into the Sarlacc pit. We went from first place to Did Not Finish, and there was nothing we could do about it. We did everything we could to catch up with the final race, but even a second place finish couldn’t save us.

After we got eliminated they took us out for an exit interview. The wanted to know what happened. What happened? Mario Kart happened. Mario Kart ran a train on us. Mario Kart made us its prison bitch, then when it was done with us, traded us for a cigarette, and it doesn’t even smoke. I think my quote on the DVD from that year is, “Basically, we got a train run on us.”

So just like that, I was out.

“Well, now what?” I thought.

At least I got to cut up front for the keynote address by Ron Gilbert. Speaking of which, absolutely amazing. He told stories about growing up in the infancy of the computer and videogame industry and how he got into it. He talked about how incredibly wrong Rodger Ebert is, and that yes, of course games are art. And I had great seats for it too (2nd row, just left of center).

I stayed put for the Penny Arcade Q & A (part 1) with Gabe and Tycho (aka Mike and Jerry) right after the keynote. I had seen pictures of them before, but if you haven’t it’s funny how little they look like their cartoon counterparts.

I stumbled around to a few panels, but I guess the word hadn’t gotten out to all the enforcers yet and I got stuck at the back of a few lines. I didn’t mind waiting too much, my schedule having opened up a bit with my loss and all, but I kind of felt like I was missing out on the one perk I had left from the Omegathon.

Is that an open bar?

That evening I met up with the rest of the group and headed out to more press parties. First we hit up Sony’s to see MAG (and only MAG) and raid their hor’dourves and open bar. They were giving out beta codes, but not having a PS3, I didn’t bother grabbing any. Should have and just hawked them on eBay.

I love seeing stuff lock up or crash at events like this (regardless of the publisher) and between the twenty some demo units there was plenty of that. No pictures though, because a shot of MAG running and MAG frozen look pretty much the same (lol no video camera). But I digress.

We caught the end of the Hudson party, and although their presentation was over there was (drum roll please…) AN OPEN BAR!!! Oh, and Deca Sports and another Bomberman game. Woo. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some Bomberman, but as soon as I found out I could get a free White Russian my priorities reorganized a bit.

This is actually one of the more bittersweet memories of my first PAX, as Hudson doesn’t even exist anymore. They made some of my favorite old school games, and now they’re just backlog that Konami will get around to at some point.

It should be noted that at some point during the evening the subject of my elimination from the Omegathon came up, and due to me now being a bit more, shall we say, socially lubricated than before, I went off a little.

I apparently threatened to go over to Nintendo’s booth the next day and yell “Hey! Which one of you dead mother fuckers designed that sand trap in Double Dash?!”

The guy from Hudson loved it too. White Russians get the job done.

We heard IGN had something going on back at Gameworks, but I guess word got out that they were buying everyone a drink. We managed to get past most of the line with press credentials (plus guests), and after a few more rounds of Street Fighter 4 (and that horse racing game) we called it a night.

The morning after the night before

Saturday started a bit slower. A weird mix of leftover depression from losing out of the Omegathon and a mild hangover from the night before made it a bit harder to get going the next morning. I checked out some more of the show floor (now that I had nothing better to do) while I was waiting for the interesting panels to start for the day.

It was fun to just look around at the different exhibits and see what publishers were pushing (or in the case of Activision, not) that year.

There was the Alienware booth using a flash based game (Plant’s vs. Zombies) that runs fine on most netbooks to show off their multi-thousand dollar top-of-the-line series of laptops.

There was Paul Wedgwood of Splash Damage promoting Brink. Someone needs to explain to Paul how microphones work. I watched him give pretty much the same presentation at Quakecon about three weeks earlier and both times it sounded like he was trying to yell to the back of the room.

Sadly, at least for me, the Omegathon pass didn’t let me cut in the exhibitor room.

The lines for most of the games that did have playable demos out were insane, especially the Blizzard stuff. I didn’t really feel like waiting for any of it though, because really, it’s still Starcraft, Diablo and World of Warcraft. It is worth noting that Diablo 3 was playable. Two years ago. What the hell’s taking so long?

A couple of us checked out the Totally Rad Show Podcast and had pretty good seats. We were about 10 feet away on the front row. I could have totally punched at least one of them before security tackled me. It was a pretty cool show, but afterward I saw the weirdest, coolest piece of promotional crap I’ve ever seen.

No More Heroes 2 themed toilet paper! I realize that in the first one the save screen was the main character on the John, but seriously, how did that meeting go?

Did someone really say “We want you to wipe your ass with our logo!” or “When people think shit, we want them to think of us!” I wasn’t even aware of the game itself at the show, so I guess it sort of worked for them.

After lunch we checked out the panel X-play host Adam Sessler and Hal Halpin, Entertainment Consumer Association president, hosted on the gaming industry in general.

They talked about the legal threats to gaming, like Jack Thompson and the California law approaching the U.S. Supreme Court at the time. The main problem, they said, was the older generations that didn’t have videogames still having a hostile attitude for them. Their solution? Wait for them to die.

It sounds a bit mean, but it’s true. There have been cultural struggles like this before. As Sessler pointed out, this is very similar to how comic books were treated in the 50s. Parents were worried about them because they used a language parents didn’t understand, and parents thought they were losing control of their kids. It’s just a matter of time before they’re accepted by society at large and that day is fast approaching.

During the Q&A section someone asked about the expanded use of 3D in videogames in the past years, and Sessler gave his now legendary analogy.

“When I was in college I had a roommate that was into piercing,” he said. “And he put about a handful of them in his junk.” He added that sometimes you would hear jingling when the guy walked.

When he asked his roommate why he did it, he explained that it made sex better.

“How bad was it for you before?” Sessler said.

He went on to say that there really wasn’t any game that he could imagine thinking “You know, this would be better if things were standing about three inches closer to me from the screen.”

Party hunters

After the panels for the day our group went in search of more free alcohol. We heard there was a party going on downtown before the concerts for the launch of Resident Evil 5. I’m sure you’re thinking “But Hans, didn’t that game come out months back?” Yeah, but this was a launch for the PC version. I know. I could hardly contain myself. To make things even better it was cash bar only. We left after five minutes.

We walked down by the docks, looking for somewhere to eat, then settled on a Red Robin because we needed to head back in time for the afore mentioned concert.

We made it back as the fourth round of the Omegathon was underway. This featured the least surprising surprise round ever, Beatles Rock Band. It was cool to see them playing it before it was released, but it was available for anyone to pick up and play over in the exhibitor area, so it wasn’t that big of a deal.

After they cleared the stage it was time for Freezepop. Most of you have probably heard of them from the first couple Guitar Hero games or the Rock Band series, but more people should know them and they put on a hell of a show. If there is such a thing as a kick-ass keytar solo, you will see several at a Freezepop show.

Plus the crowd was huge and really into it, complete with coordinated vault-boy puppet dancing.

Oh, and someone was holding a Macbook up instead of a lighter. The sheer ridiculousness of bringing a laptop in and no one really questioning it is what sets PAX apart. For nerds, geeks, or whatever else you want to call us, this is our Woodstock. You know, except it’s annual and they don’t charge you $200 for tickets then $9 for a bottle of water.

Paul & Storm and Jonathan Coulton followed Freezepop, each act putting on a hell of a show.

It was one of the best concerts I’ve ever been to and I’ll never forget it. My feet felt like they were bleeding by about 10:30 and the concert didn’t get out until well after midnight. I limped back to the hotel to rest up for the last day of PAX.

Bitter sweet Connect 4

Sunday started with the semifinal round of the Omegathon, Connect 4. They’ve traditionally done board games in the past, most notoriously Jenga.

They had a 10 second timer on to keep things moving. I guess they learned their lesson a few years ago with a Jenga that took something like an hour and a half.

This was another awkward moment for me. As soon as I saw the games list for the Omegathon I had looked forward to this round. I’m not sure why, but even while fantasizing about the competition I saw myself getting eliminated here. As such, I had made plans for my exit. Not that I was going to throw the match. I just suck at Connect 4. I had planned on getting to the point where no matter which move you make you’ve lost. I would then backhand the board off the stage and storm off, only to return shortly thereafter to congratulate the winner.

It turns out it wouldn’t have worked even if I had made it that far, as the PA guys had found a copy of Giant Connect 4. The board is about four feet tall. Not sure that would have gone too well.

Happily, the guy who got in by being in second place was one of the two to move on to the still secret final round.

Next we went over to check out the public demo of Star Wars: The Old Republic. Yes, much like Diablo 3, they were showing this off two years ago. Text trees and left clicking are hard.

Later, while waiting in the VIP line for Wil Wheaton — there were so many people trying to get in that the people who normally got to cut had to get in their own, separate line — I made quite possibly the most important discovery of our time: I found Waldo.

I went to a couple more panels, including one about the quality of videogame reviews hosted by a bunch of industry vets, full of great stories. For example, while discussing integrity and whether or not it is necessary to do every little thing in every game you review, one guy talked about how a former writer for his site once docked Max Payne a couple points in his review because he didn’t like the multiplayer. Max Payne has no multiplayer. I think you can see the problem here. That’s why I referred to him as a former writer.

There was another Penny Arcade Q&A. At the previous panel they had talked briefly about weird, homoerotic fan art of their characters people have drawn. Well, this time around someone had some of it with them. Gabe said he was going to sign it across “his junk” and Tycho freaked out a little.

“Don’t sign it! Now it’ll go on eBay as an original!”

The final countdown

Sunday evening was the grand finale of PAX, so everyone headed back to the main event room to see the last round of the Omegathon. Once again, I got to cut, and this time I dragged the whole group along with me.

Most of the other Omegathon rounds had maybe 40 people in the room watching, with the exception of the round right before Saturday’s concerts. This one had thousands, and with good reason. There’s the tension of still not knowing what they’re going to play. There’s the tension of watching two of your fellow gamers compete for a great prize, with the loser only getting an invite to try again next year. Then there’s the fact that there really isn’t anything else going on at that time and it’s the official end of PAX, so really, where else are they going to be?

We got in early, but sat back a ways to get actual seats. Everyone else filled in in front of us, standing room only, but several of us still had sore feet from the concert the night before so there was no way we were standing up for another hour.

Everyone was still talking about what the final game would be. And really, it could be anything. They did Vs. Excitebike the year before, a game that only came out in Japan for the Famicom Disk System (a floppy disk drive add-on for the Japanese NES).

During the build up to it Gabe and Tycho mentioned that they had done just about every type of game for a final round, but that they wanted to take it back to the arcade. The crowd buzzed with anticipation. What could it be?

Skeeball? Really? Yes really. Finalists had to square off in a score competition for the trip to Tokyo on what turned out to be the single crappiest functioning Skeeball machine in the world. The damn thing kept breaking down so often during the competition that they had to keep score by hand.

After several rounds, last year’s runner up finally…lost. Again. I think he lost in the quarterfinals or something last year. He was dangerously close to turning into the early ’90s Buffalo Bills of the Omegathon.

And that was PAX

Well, that pretty much wraps things up. It was one of the most incredible experiences of my life, and even though I got bounced out of the Omegathon so early I loved coming back last year and look forward to this year’s trip.

So, for those Omeganauts who stuck out this behemoth post, my advice is this:

Embrace your time there. Practice before you get there, but don’t build up the competition to the end all, be all of your experience at PAX.

I lost out of the tournament within 45 minutes of entering it, and I still consider that long weekend in early September 2009 to be one of the greatest, most exciting, most memorable experiences I’ve ever had. Don’t forget to take the time to enjoy it.

(P.S. – If you want to see more pics from that trip, I’ve got them up on my Flickr page. Enjoy.)