I Saw The Best Of PAX In A 4-Year-Old Game

Image: Kotaku



That moment? It's PAX in a nutshell.

You know what the real advantage of being on the "inside", being a part of the gaming industry is? You get to try things before they're released.

That was something that was open to everyone. Before pre-orders and digital distribution, that was the way you got people excited. Make a good demo. Get it on a demo disc. Maybe even release it online if you were brave enough. Or go the old-fashioned route of shareware.

We don't get that anymore.

Demos and previews are gated behind subscription services. They're given away as tickets to major conventions and events. You could pay hundreds of dollars and still not even be guaranteed to get a go of a 15 minute demo that could be six months old or more.

Try before you buy is now a privilege, a luxury for those who want to pay in advance.

PAX certainly feeds into that. You're paying to get in, after all. But the sheer variety helps mitigate the feeling of being sold to.

And then there's the opportunities where you don't have to pay.

Image: Supplied

Something you see indies doing a lot more of these days is selling merchandise. They often don't have a product that's ready to sell. So they get into the pin trading game. Print t-shirts. Offer plushies. Bundles with other games. Candy.

And it works. A huge element of PAX is the impulse purchase. Developers have gotten a lot better at taking advantage. The Surprise Attack booth would let you buy one of five titles for $10 a pop.

You could get a bundle with all the games, but the $10 a game was genius. It meant people could spend 10 or 15 minutes with a game on the show floor - the full game, in many instances - and then walk away with a Steam key minutes later.

It worked a treat for Orwell. Orwell isn't the type of game that really does well on a show floor. It's slow. It's methodical. There's a lot of reading. It looks like you're reading a database. And it's not visually flashy.

But people loved it. And if they liked it, they could immediately take home the full game (or what's available and all future episodes, in the case of Orwell) minutes later.

That's smart.

Image: Kotaku

But the system is also fair to consumers. You're often dealing with indie games with full access to their developers, who are all to happy to tell you everything you need to know, completely frank about where their game is and what they want it to be.

It's refreshing. And it helps get you past buyer's remorse, since the impulse to buy is directly based on the full version of the product. It's not a pre-order on The World's Best Trailer. It's not a pre-order based off a Kickstarter description - although there were quite a few games that were either in the process of a Kickstarter, or about to launch a campaign, that you could play before deciding to support.

There's also the bit where you can play something and not have to spend a cent.

My friends and I did this with The Networks, a game released this year about bidding for TV shows and stars as you built ratings for your own cable network. The premise seemed fantastic, and the description on the back of the unwrapped box seemed tailor-made for our tastes.

But thanks to the Machi Koro experience, we figured we'd try before we buy.

Thank fuck we did.

The Networks turned out to have far too many phases. The general idea is that people bid for shows, stars and ads over the course of four seasons, with players getting one action per turn to choose what they want.

In principle it isn't hard to understand. But the information isn't laid out as cleanly as it could be. There's also a lot of elements that require explaining, and the network cards (special actions, basically) don't come into play until the second season.

There's four or five seasons in a game. We only finished the first.

The Networks in action, with players bidding on the shows below, ads and stars at the top, and the score in the middle.

It's the sense of discovery.

You wander around the tabletop area, the exhibition hall, or the show floor. It might be the tens or hundreds sitting down outside the main theatre waiting for another game of Jackbox. It might be a bizarre board game you've never seen before. It might just be a shiny set of dice.

It's things you normally wouldn't see, things you normally wouldn't be able to touch and play with.

That's been lost a little bit of late. Demos usually come out after a game has released. If it's available beforehand, it's because you're paying for it either through a pre-order or some form of monthly payment.

PAX reminds me of a time that we've lost, a time where customers were respected just that little bit more.

That doesn't mean vendors and manufacturers aren't baying for our money any less. It just feels a little bit fairer at PAX, which is reason enough to go next year.


    Machi Koro is a great game. Really needs that expansion to shine though, the base game is a bit bland.

      Yeah, it's got an obvious flaw in the base game if everyone ends up trying to disrupt each other.

      Seven Wonders is more fleshed out in that regard, and kind of hits the same sort of appeal without the dice.

      A game which, as a result of PAX, I'll be buying later this week. (Thanks to Eric for showing me and my friends how to play also. You're a legend.)

        7 Wonders is one of my favourite games. Machi Koro is not. In my eyes, Machi Koro is a better version of Catan without the trading aspect. There are definitely reasons to appreciate that.

        They're both ostensibly tableau buildings but they use such fundamentally different mechanics to achieve that goal that they're really not comparable. Also I'm a complete sucker for drafting.

        It can result in some hilarious stalemating too. Remember playing a game in which one player needed to roll I think a 7 to win the game, and the other needed to roll an 8. For close to five rounds, the one that needed the 7 rolled an 8, and the one that needed an 8 rolled a 7.

        I personally cannot stand Seven Wonders and don't understand why everyone seems to like it. It's like the cool kids' equivalent of Munchkin, something that I groan whenever it's dragged out because I know I'll never win it and won't enjoy the bit in between either.

        Last edited 09/11/16 7:24 am

      We prefer the base game of Machi Koro with a randomised store variant. Rather than laying out a separate pile for each type of purchasable card from the start, we shuffle them all together, then layout just 10 random cards. Each time one is purchased, another is dealt out.
      Makes it a little easier for new players (less choice, less overwhelming), discourages repeated games with the same power strategies, means you have to be more adaptive, makes cases of "oh no, I wanted that one!", and with that we find it more interesting and fun.

        The randomized store was one of the rule changes they made in the expansion and it makes all the difference. Base game would probably play better that way too.

    I didn't do much tabletop stuff this year, but I did end up playing an unreleased card game with the vice president of Chaosium and a few others so that was cool.

    I spent some time talking to the developers of Evergreen, a chilled building game, where one controls a tree that influences evolution. I'd played with it last year for a while, and was delighted to see it still being worked on.

    The devs were really frank about the difficulties of working on a game they are clearly proud of. This is why I like cons.

    Machi koro is something i recommend for new gamers

    I played the demo for The eyes of Ara and I was so disappointed when I finished it. For that reason alone, I have wishlisted it on steam, ready to get it when I can.

      I've stuck the flyer next to my desk. It's perfectly in the pointyclickymysty genre I love. :)

    You should have asked one of us Tabletop Teachers - we'd happily have helped you with the Networks - one of my favourite games of this year :)

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