PAX Prime 2015 schedule

Here’s where I’ll be if you wanna stop by and we can wink at each other back and forth

Friday 6:30PM - 7:30PM Sasquatch Theater AppJunkies Live: The Worst Games Ever Made

Join the AppJunkies as they highlight the best of the worst games, straight from the seedy side of the app store. It's an entirely new lineup of horrible app disasters, so prepare to be amazed (and slightly stunned) at this fast-paced journey through the Land of Absurdity. Often dubbed "the MST3K of B-Grade apps," it's an hour of your life you won't get back. Audience heckling encouraged…at least for those not rendered speechless.

Saturday & Sunday: All day ACT Theater I’m an Exploding Kittens/Oatmeal booth laborer!

Sunday 10:00AM - 11:30AM Hydra Theater The 3rd Annual* PAX Rumble! N64 Wrestling, 30 Challengers, and YOU!

Against the better judgment of all involved, we're back for the 3rd Annual PAX Rumble! Except this is really our 3rd Rumble in 2 years, but we're just so dang excited! 30 incredibly talented members of the gaming community will crowd around a Nintendo 64-era wrestling game and yell at each other for your amusement. Previous PAX wrestling panels have seen a man in American flag pants power bombed through a table, bottles broken over the head of a doctor wearing a velvet tracksuit, and a Diet Coke can who died and was resurrected by magic. What barely containable chaos will unfold this time around? How much longer will Penny Arcade permit this nonsense? The next step is involving actual professional wrestlers, right? Life is strange.

Journey

This is the story of my overwhelmingly emotional playthrough of Journey.

I played the first half of the game more or less on my own; I ran into a couple of fellow travelers, but our time together was brief.

Then, one night, I began the second half. Almost immediately upon starting, I was joined by an anonymous someone and we ended up beating the game together: slogging through the elements of the wastes, dodging the dragons, stopping and calling loudly when we got separated, waiting for one another to unlock new areas, nudging and singing to each other as we travelled.

At the very end of the game, after you collapse in the snow and enter The Afterlife or Paradise or whatever you want to call it, we goofed around together, expressing what limited exuberance we could to each other. We flew and surfed and played, but never strayed too far, and I found myself looking for their white song bubble to make sure they hadn’t continued on without me. They hadn’t.

When we were done, we landed together on the snowy platform just short of the crevice. We both knew we were about to beat the game. My friend started to run circles around me, mashing their song button — our established form of urgent communication. I had no real way to tell them goodbye, so I walked in the snow to form the shape of a heart. They walked the same path, then drew an even bigger one around it.

Then we turned and walked into the light together, and the scene faded on our two shrinking silhouettes.

(originally written Mar 30, 2012)

advice

After my panel at G4C last week, I got a question via email that I wanted to share. I hope this advice was good, and I’d definitely like to hear any additional advice others might give.

I'd tell her about my experiences, and I would give her the best advice I could: follow your passion, talk about whatever you want to talk about, and understand that the internet is going to be brutal to you no matter how awesome or charming or intelligent you are at what you do. 

I would encourage her to make content for the joy of making it and not to rely on the conversation or feedback for her validation. 

I would tell her that comments are an abyss, but I don't think I would say "don't read the comments" or "don't feed the trolls" because it puts the responsibility on her, which she doesn't deserve. 

I would tell her to be careful about her personal information online and to take measures to have a degree (or ten) of separation from her work on the internet. 

And I would tell her that her mental health is the most important thing. If the project takes a toll on her, I would tell her that she needs to understand there's no shame or defeat in stepping away from it. As I am very fond of saying: it's just fucking video games. Take care of your own mind and heart first. 

Best email ever

Recently I spoke at PAX East with two other (amazing) ladies on the subject of user interface & experience in video games. The panel, called Heads Up, was a lot of fun and we’re hoping to do it again at PAX Prime.

Yesterday, I received a wonderful email from a young man. Here’s a part of it:

I love the character cards in Dragon Age: Inquisition so I made one for my Inquisitor, Adrielle.

I gave my notice at ArenaNet this week. My last day will be 9/4.

Working on an MMO has been my dream job for a long, long, long time. When I got hired at ArenaNet, I truly believed I had found my home. And for the better part of four years, it's been exactly that. The developers are my family, and we created something extraordinary together.

The opportunities I've been given at this company have floored me. I started as a web designer, became the UI Lead of the Extended Experience team, and then moved into UI for the game itself. I've represented our game and our company proudly at conventions, in interviews, and as the host of our awesome developer show, "Points of Interest". I've flown to Shanghai twice to brainstorm UI with our Chinese publisher, Kong Zhong. The list goes on.

What's next, you may wonder? I have no idea.

To my coworkers: you are crazy talented people. Keep on making incredible things.

To the Guild Wars 2 players: ArenaNet does what it does in the sincere, singular hope of absolutely delighting you. Remember that!

To Mike O'Brien: thank you for a glorious four years, a wonderful game, and a terrific company.

I'll leave you with what I posted on the Penny Arcade forums on the eve of Guild Wars 2's launch:

"I'm going to try to get some sleep, because I'm exhausted, and tomorrow is going to be a very long day. There is such a range of emotion I'm experiencing right now, but mostly I just want to say that I hope you guys love it. Love it forever, or love it and then move on to something else, but just love it, and know that three hundred of us melted down our hearts to give it to you. It's all yours soon."

- Kate