• Penny arcade expo 2008

    The Maw Devours PAX 10 Audience Choice Award

    The results of the inauguaral PAX 10 indie games showcase are in and the audience has spoken. 10 games won spots on display at the 2008 Penny Arcade Expo, where convention goers were asked to cast secret ballots selecting their favorite of the lot, and Twisted Pixel's XBLA action platformer The Maw came out on top.
    "The intense sense of purpose and camaraderie amongst The PAX 10 was astonishing," commented Michael Wilford of Twisted Pixel. "We feel extremely lucky to have been chosen from such an august group and grateful to have been a part of the PAX experience."
    More »

    11:20 AM on Tue Sep 23 2008
    By Mike Fahey
    2,875 views, 14 comments

    Latest by Karlott: Had to be really good to beat Audiosurf, so it probably rocks. more »

  • Penny arcade expo 2008

    Send Us Your Penny Pics, Win a PAX Schwag Bag

    Don't forget: You still have time to enter our contest to win the bag of schwag we collected at this year's Penny Arcade Expo. To enter you just need to send in a picture of your game-themed penny creation. It can be characters scenes, or even a lovely load screen, like the one from Braid pictures above. Make sure to include a Kotaku in the pic so we know you're not faking it.

    You have until Friday to enter. Hit up the link for the rules.

    Win Our Penny Arcade Expo Swag for Pennies a Day [Kotaku]

    9:00 AM on Mon Sep 22 2008
    By Brian Crecente
    3,268 views, 18 comments

    Most discussed 2NinjasTapedTogether: I should get two hundred dollars in pennies, get into a bathtub, and just swim in them. That would more »

  • Penny arcade expo 2008

    Win our Penny Arcade Expo Swag For Pennies A Day

    Those of you who have been around on the site for awhile know that I am a cruel craftsman of contests. I like to include site scouring scavenger hunts, math problems, arcane historic knowledge in my quests for free swag.

    But I'm also in the midst of planning trips to New York and Tokyo over the next few weeks, so I don't have time to be cruel. Instead, I'm going to allow you to be creative. We have, at Adam's house, a backpack of Penny Arcade Expo swag that need to get into the hands of a faithful reader but quick.

    When I asked around in Kotaku Tower for ideas for a contest, Fahey was quick to come up with something equal parts diabolical and fun. Recreate a scene from a video game with pennies. I think he may have been joking, but I'm not. Make sure to include, when you snap your picture, something that says Kotaku on it in the image, so we know you're on the up and up.

    Deadline is Sept. 26. Mail all entries to KotakuContestATGmailDOTcom with "PAX" in the subject line and the photo in the body. We'll announce the winner that Monday. Here's what you have a chance of winning: More »

    1:00 PM on Thu Sep 18 2008
    By Brian Crecente
    6,167 views, 56 comments

  • Ghost Advertising

    PAX Ghostbusters Lanyards Were Ghosts Of The Past

    We were as puzzled as anyone as to why Penny Arcade Expo attendees were being given lanyards advertising the currently in limbo Ghostbusters: The Game. Who would go to all the trouble of getting so many promotional items made up for a game that has no publisher? People from the past, that's who. According to Penny Arcade's Robert Khoo, speaking to Variety, Sierra had signed up to sponsor the lanyards way back in January, delivered the product in June, only to find out weeks before the show that the game was no longer a going concern as far as far as ActiBlizzard was concerned.

    With little time left to get new lanyards together, the PAX folks just ran with it, thus creating the sad little Ghostbusters promotional items. There's a bright side at least. As Variety's Ben Fritz points out, whoever winds up publishing the game just got a boatload of free advertising courtesy of Sierra.

    The deal with those Ghostbusters lanyards at PAX [Variety]

    10:20 AM on Fri Sep 5 2008
    By Mike Fahey
    1,981 views, 40 comments

    Most discussed spacecoffin2: Doh sorry about the blank post ( I suck at the internets :P ) I was trying to figure out more »

  • impressions

    Saints Row 2 Shakes Its GTA Roots

    I was about ten minutes into the Saints Row 2 demo on the Penny Arcade show floor last week when it hit me: The game didn't feel like a GTA rip-off.

    It was still free-roaming and featured detailed 3D avatars. It still had plenty of running and gunning. But the vibe, the feel of the game didn't have the same GTA-ness to it that, to many, marked the first Saints Row a Grand Theft Auto clone. More »

    3:00 PM on Wed Sep 3 2008
    By Brian Crecente
    14,932 views, 66 comments

  • Penny arcade expo 2008

    The Problem with PAX

    The Penny Arcade Expo hit a few road bumps this year, discovering that their exponential growth, while slightly slowed, is still enough to cause problems with line-management and space issues.

    But that's a problem easily solved, and the PA folks are all over it.

    The bigger problem, as I see it, is in the expo's name and its association with Penny Arcade. More »

    3:00 PM on Tue Sep 2 2008
    By Brian Crecente
    19,292 views, 247 comments

  • penny arcade expo 2008

    Pax To Address Overcrowding For 2009

    The Penny Arcade Expo hit 58,500 attendees this year - way up from 2007's 37,000 and just a shade lower than E3 in its prime.

    Although the general feeling was that the con was a big success, there were complaints that some panels and demos were difficult/impossible to get in to due to overcrowding and the organizers admit that there is work to be done for next year.

    "We finally stopped doubling our attendance," said Penny Arcade Business Development manager Robert Khoo, "but lord I'm not sure if we could have handled any more people if they showed up. Key learnings for next year? Better line management and more space!"

    For the 2009 event, Khoo told BigDownload.com that they were going to introduce some practical crowd management measures.

    "We have a few ideas to manage that problem for 2009 including wristbands for popular events or just a straight-up hard count of people in line."

    Penny Arcade Expo 2008: 58,500 attendees [BigDownload]

    1:20 PM on Tue Sep 2 2008
    By Stuart Houghton
    2,296 views, 52 comments

  • Penny arcade expo 2008

    Breaking Faces with FaceBreaker

    I had a chance to play around with Facebreaker a bit on the Penny Arcade Expo show floor over the weekend.

    Graphically, the game delivers, but I was a little surprised, slightly disappointed even, at how simplistic the controls were.The four face buttons let you throw high punches, low punches, strong punches and perform a grab and throw. To block a punch you pull a trigger and to duck a punch you hold in the corresponding punch button.

    While you can move your fighter around with the joystick, this doesn't really seem to come into play much. Mostly you want to be close enough to duke it out and I found myself relying on the duck buttons to avoid blows, rather than moving my fighter away from the fight. More »

    12:30 PM on Tue Sep 2 2008
    By Brian Crecente
    5,855 views, 75 comments

    Most discussed Ijkabob: EA sucks... Everything they touch slowly withers and dies more »

  • penny arcade expo 2008

    Win Our PAX Schwag Bag

    Penny Arcade Expo has wrapped up and we're left with a ton of freebies and nowhere to put them. So we're going to hand them off to a reader.

    Among the freebies that we are giving away with our schwag bag are tons of t-shirts (including pretty sweet Fruit Fucker and The Maw shirts) , a Fallout 3 survival guide, a World of Warcraft pet card from this year's WWI in Paris (the Blizzard guys were kind enough to hand one over to us), a ping-pong gun and plenty of little do-dads.

    OK, so how should we do this. Any suggestions?

    11:00 AM on Tue Sep 2 2008
    By Brian Crecente
    4,812 views, 298 comments

    Most discussed Eville1 says SKUse me a sec.: A "submit a photograph as a reason you did not attend pax." Contest. more »

  • penny arcade expo 2008

    Schwag Off: Who had the Best Schwag of PAX?

    There was plenty of cool stuff to grab at this year's Penny Arcade Expo. Lots of t-shirts of course, stickers, wrist bands, all of those freebies from bungie, the boxes of stuff. You could even get a free copy of Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway if you were willing to have your head shaved. Tristan got a free spray-painted tattoo. (There were two designs) Among all of the largess two companies' swag really stood out though. More »

    7:00 PM on Mon Sep 1 2008
    By Brian Crecente
    14,112 views, 58 comments

    Most discussed Cojo21: I'm not voting on typos.... Fallout 3 Schwag FTW. ....PUPPETS! more »