It’s Melbourne International Games Week! Which primarily means three things: there’s a lot of great indie game goodness going on around M-town right now; M-town has snapped back to its standard spring temperature of “too damn cold” after briefly pretending it would be sunny for MIGW, and; it’s PAX this weekend!
We have a lot of tips and suggestions below for anyone heading into our fair sleetball to enjoy the community spirit and reheated mushroom burgers of Australia’s biggest games expo. But if you’re not going there’s still some MIGW left to enjoy from home. The Australian Game Developer Awards are on from 7pm tonight, and you can download and play a bunch of games on your PC as part of ACMI’s Big Games Night In.
PAX AUS 101
By Tim
This will be my eighth PAX Australia, but if you’ve never been or are just a bit rusty (this is the first one since 2019 after all), you may be wondering what to expect or where you should focus your energy.
Generally my favourite part is the first thing you hit when you make it through the queue hall; the indie pavillion. This is where you find more than 60 little setups of delightful gaming goodness you mostly haven't been able to play before, and can chat to the nervous and excited developers as they take notes and bask in all manner of unsolicited feedback.
Beyond that of course is the main show floor, a cacophony of demos and marketing loudly vying for your attention. PAX veterans will mostly know what to expect here — watch for flash crowds at the Twitch and Red Bull booths, think twice about putting your eyeballs on public VR headsets, try not to be tempted by mystery box merch at King's Comics — but there's also usually a lot of new gear on show for tech heads. Games-wise the heavy hitters in attendance will be Devolver, Square Enix and Sega.
The far end of the main hall is where things get super nerdy, which we love, with a huge assortment of tabletop exhibitors, retro stuff and console and PC stations you can play with. This is where you go if you just want to sit and play something for a good long while with friends (or while making some new friends), and it rocks.
But exploring these big spaces is only part of the fun. If you really want to make the most of your time you’re going to want to take a look at the massive schedule and plan to take part in some more organised activities as well.
The convention centre across from the expo hall is stacked with two floors of theatres, which will host everything from panels featuring the hosts of your favourite local podcasts to talks giving practical advice and insights. Plus there are loads of tournaments, speedruns, meetups and workshops dotted around the entire event. You just need to make sure you’ve scheduled yourself to get to each one early, while leaving plenty of time for wandering.
What to play
If you are heading to PAX, I (Alice) strongly recommend coming to the PAX Together Lounge to check out the indie games we have on show. The two main standouts to me are Wayward Strand, which is set in an airborne hospital and is utterly charming, and Mental Jam, a collection of games made in collaboration with young people with anxiety. If you’re there in person, you can meet the developers. If you’re not there, you can check out Mental Jam here and Wayward Strand here.
For those of you staying home this week, fear not! It’s a new month, and so there’s new goodies included with your console’s subscriptions. Headlining the PlayStation Plus Essential lineup for October is Injustice 2, one of the most brutal and entertaining fighting games I’ve ever played. While I don’t necessarily love the story of it, the way the backgrounds crumble and fall apart, and the sheer power you feel from the various superheroes is electrifying. I’ve spent many hours playing it and I look forward to playing it more. Then there’s Hot Wheels Unleashed, a game I’ve been curious about checking out for months, and I’m pleased to have the opportunity to play it without paying for it. It doesn’t hold a candle to the Forza Horizon 5 Hot Wheels expansion, but it’s still a good time.
Rounding out the PS Plus games is Superhot, an incredible 2016 shooter that I (Tim) assume has already been played by everyone who might be interested in it, but maybe not! The hook here is that time only moves when you move, so you can stay still or go slow to dodge bullets and plan your attacks. Plus it has a really cool transhuman narrative.
The writing may be on the wall for Xbox Games With Gold, which offers up two relatively unknown Xbox One games this month, in what I believe is the service’s worst value since at least 2016. For seven years or so we’ve been getting at least four games each month; two Xbox One games and two 360 or original Xbox games, but October marks the end of the older games being offered. I assumed this meant more newer games, or at least higher profile ones, but that appears to not be the case. No offense to survival exploration game Windbound and WWII flight strategy Bomber Crew, which are available this month, but they’re inexpensive games I’ve never heard of before.
Nine tips for show floor success
By Alice
PAX is a fun and good convention. Of course I would say that, I’ve been a contractor co-curating the PAX Together area (formerly the Diversity Lounge) since 2014. What I love about PAX compared to the other conventions I love is that while other conventions are focussed on the celebrities, PAX is about the people. Random people who applied to do the most interesting panel you’ve ever heard, industry professionals, and the friends you meet learning to play a new game.
Whether this is your first PAX, or you’ve been going since 2013, here are some things I recommend you do:
Go to the tabletop area and play a game you’ve never heard of with a stranger. They have people down there who can help you learn the rules and set you up for a great weekend of discovering games you’ll immediately want to buy.
Venture out of the Exhibition hall. Yes, the main show floor is very cool, but in the convention building next door there is way more to discover. Including PAX Together and all the satellite theatres and cosplay.
Go see Leah Williams’ panel Cow Cults and Alien Plants: The Dark Underbelly of The Sims. It’s at 2pm Sunday in the Kookaburra Theatre and it will probably be hilarious.
I am completely biased on this, but NerdKwiz is a games and pop culture themed quiz show Donald Duong and I have been doing since 2014 and it’s a lot of fun. It’s at 7pm Saturday in the Together Theatre with special guests Jam Walker, Jess Zammit and Steve Wright.
Go to the Rock Band room and play Rock Band with strangers in front of a small crowd. It is *such* a fun experience! It’s how I spend my breaks during the show.
Go to a PAX Together movie night! On Friday at 8 we have a sing-a-long of the two Xena musical episodes, and on Saturday at 8 we’re screening D.E.B.S, which is my favourite B grade movie about spies which is actually more of a romantic comedy.
Find a panel on a niche hobby that sounds vaguely interesting. I quite like the sound of How To Mod Your Controller in the Fruitbat Theatre 3PM Sunday, but there’s heaps of random interesting panels that can lead to new knowledge.
Download the PAX app and have a look at the whole schedule. Then, add everything you think sounds interesting to your schedule.
Be prepared to ignore your schedule entirely if you see something shiny or interesting. Just go and have a great time. It’s going to be weird going somewhere with that many people after so long, so prepare yourself for the shock of that, but also be open to new experiences and friends.
Bricks, Boards and Beginnings
by Alice
The “beginnings” mentioned in the name of this column is all about inclusion, diversity, accessibility and representation, acknowledging that we’re at the start of all those things becoming normalised, particularly in video games. So it’s not totally off brand to take this opportunity to recommend some of the things that fit that bill coming up at PAX. Not that I wouldn’t have done it anyway.
One thing I’m particularly proud of in the PAX Together Theatre this year is that we have an Auslan interpreter for at least six panels (and who is available upon request if you would like a game or other panel interpreted). Those current six panels are:
Friday:
10:30 Character Re-Creator: Exploring Gender Expression Through Games
12:00 Tell Us We're Dreamin': Making Games Driven By Values (And Spite)
Saturday:
2:00 Gaming For Good
5:30 Pixel Hearts Video Game Blind Date
Sunday:
12:00 Tinstar Workshop
2:30 Indigenising Game Development
While I obviously recommend everything happening in the PAX Together Lounge and Theatre, of particular note is a conversation with Anita Mortaloni, the director of accessibility at Xbox, about the various accessibility features Microsoft is working on. That’s on Friday at 1pm.
Transgender Victoria is also doing a panel of conversations with trans and gender diverse gamers at 3pm on Saturday, which sounds really interesting.
A panel that’s a sequel to my favourite presentation from last year is Jamming With First Nations: The Music of Innchanted Part Deux. It’s hosted by Meena Shamalay, who is an ABC Classic presenter and composer who has worked on video games, talking about collaborating with First Nations musicians to make a score for an upcoming game. That’s 1:30pm Saturday.
To address the “Boards” part of this column’s name, I’m hosting Magic the Gathering tournaments and Learn To Play D&D sessions every day, along with tabletop game meetup hours in the Together Lounge. Over on the Expo floor there’s a new area for indie table top game designers, so you’ll have the chance to play lots of new stuff.
As for the “Bricks”… I’m giving away some Lego sets for the Xena fighting game tournament, I guess?
Whatever you end up doing at PAX, come say hi! I’ll be around PAX Together all weekend.
Retro Esoterica
by Tim
As mentioned above, there’s also no shortage of retro stuff at PAX. Not everyone has CRTs and a huge assortment of decades-old gear sitting around in their home — a fact that I’m forced to acknowledge whenever I visit literally anybody else’s house — which makes the Classic Gaming corner perfect for the retro-curious.
If you’ve never played Smash on a big honking monitor with real Gamecube controllers, or want to explain to your children what pinball is, or just like to gawk at collections of rare old plastic doodads, make sure to put a visit on your schedule. Even if you do have heaps of your own old stuff, you’re bound to find something really obscure to scoff at but secretly covet.
While you’re there you can also sign up for pinball lessons, or one of the tournaments. This year you can put your thumbs to the test in R-Type, California Games, Duke Nukem 3D, River Raid, Missile Command and others.
But why limit yourself to competing in games that people have heard of and might be good at? Over at the PAX Together space you’ll find the annual tournament featuring a thoroughly random and forgettable game: Xena: Warrior Princess: The Talisman of Fate for the Nintendo 64.
Now don’t get me wrong, Xena is (surprisingly) not a bad game. But it is a rather complex and obscure fighting game using a bizarre controller that very few people have held in the past 20 years, which tends to even the playing field somewhat. It’s notable for allowing up to four people to fight in arenas at the same time, but when everyone’s simultaneously leaping about, taunting and trying to work out the combos and special moves at the same time it can all descend into chaos.