ReedPop and Penny Arcade have confirmed that PAX East 2021 won't be able to take place this year, but the fun continues thanks to the return of PAX Online.
While physical events are still impossible due to the current climate, PAX Online hopes to engage with fans "in new ways", including an Indie Showcase that'll take place between now and the event's start on 15th July. PAX Event Director, Kyle Marsden-Kish, has shared the following statement:
In light of ongoing public health concerns, ReedPop and Penny Arcade will not hold PAX East this year. Given the United States’ progress towards addressing COVID-19 in recent months, we are cautiously optimistic PAX West and PAX Unplugged will proceed as planned with in-person festivities Sept. 3-6 and Dec. 10-12, respectively.
Since we can't wait until September to reconnect with the wonderful PAX community, PAX Online will return July 15-18. We hope to build on the success of last year’s record-breaking event and also engage with our community in new ways, such as the Indie Showcase that will take place between now and PAX Online. Expect to hear more about these exciting plans soon.
Of course, PAX Online worked as a very welcome alternative last September. You might remember that we at Nintendo Life held our very own Indie Spotlight as part of the celebrations, which seemed to go down a treat.
ReedPop and Penny Arcade say that they are continuing to monitor the situation surrounding the pandemic and look forward to returning to a physical event in Boston in 2022.
Comments 7
I figured this was how it'd go down I look forward to it though
The biggest issue for all these online events is they’ll probably be showing 90-95% of exactly the same games. Seems a very crowded market unless they can come up with something unique like celebrities playing the games or something.
@MrGawain
And everyone knows that paying pop culture figures to play games is totally what people wanna see. Not the games themselves, right? 🙄
@MrGawain @JR150 Maybe for most interested in games but a celebrity face attached to something will make it stand out in a crowd and attract more people, even at the expense of what we would want.
Take Cyberpunk and Keanu Reeves for example. That thing blew way more up and the Xbox event became the talk of everywhere and still memed to this day due to his appearance.
To a lesser note can take Vin Diesel and Rodriguez appearing at the Game Awards, though the end results were the far opposite, it still got that trash cash in Fast and Furious game a lot of eyes upon it.
@XenoShaun
And both Cyberpunk and that F&F game ended up being terrible by the time people actually played them.
Am I saying that every video game that uses a celebrity to market itself pre-release is going to end up being garbage because it's a cheap tactic to get people's attention on low quality games?
No. Not always. But these are two very big examples of such.
@JR150
My point is if E3 or any of the other events have shown 2021’s demo levels of Assassin’s Creed and COD and whatever, what real motivation does the audience have to watch it again on the PAX stream? You have to imagine the games will largely be the same, and the parts of those games on show will be the same, so they need to get a different perspective and voice experience the game than just another journalist or influencer.
"Online"
So basically a pre-recorded cringe compilation with vidya games.
Basically 80% of YouTube nowadays.
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