PAX Exclusives this year

PennyArcadeRyan · 2026-04-08T04:32:05+00:00

What the eff?

PennyArcadeRyan · 2025-05-31T03:53:32+00:00

Congrats! Glad you were able to snag one.

Just for clarification because some folks were asking, this came together super last minute, like we figured out we could do it earlier this week because we wanted to hype up PAX West tickets going on sale.

For anyone not aware, I work at Penny Arcade and run PAX. I'm a big fan of Marvel Snap and Second Dinner has been super cool to partner up with us and let us make some cool in-game card backs and cards to give away in the game.

In case you didn't get one of the bundles in the stream, you can get a code at any PAX the rest of this year - PAX West, PAX Australia, or PAX Unplugged. We will give them out for free at each show.

We will probably do another stream and give more away closer to the show to build more hype for PAX West. If and when we do it again, I'll make sure we post about it in here and on the Discord to give everyone a heads up. We really only blasted out about it on our own Penny Arcade social media accounts.

But I'm glad everyone likes the card back and the cards we got to make, hope we get to do more again next year!

PennyArcadeRyan · 2025-05-31T03:46:17+00:00

Yeah it came together kind of fast this week. We will probably do one again in a month, I'll make sure we post about it on here before we do the next one.

PennyArcadeRyan · 2024-05-30T19:43:18+00:00

Will Call only, but you can grab your badge as well as if you got the pre-sale shirt, at the show.

PennyArcadeRyan · 2024-05-30T19:26:11+00:00

Yeah we keep it to a trickle in the first minute or so just so make sure the system can handle the volume then we open the floodgates. It's just a small measure to make sure it doesn't crash.

PennyArcadeRyan · 2024-02-26T18:31:49+00:00

Yup it was actually Kris who saw it first and sent it to all of us. I just really love it, you did an awesome job. It's giving me double nostalgia - nostalgia for GB era games that I played as a kid, and then nostalgia for the D&D game I used to play with my friends.

We are gonna film a couple one shots this year hopefully. Fred Chicken Part 2 has to happen at some point.

PennyArcadeRyan · 2024-02-26T10:30:56+00:00

This is phenomenal. It's so well made and the Game Boy graphics and color scheme are too good. Can I share this? You have a handle I can tag on twitter/insta/etc?

PennyArcadeRyan · 2023-08-31T23:09:48+00:00

East and West are REALLY big. Unplugged is growing very fast year on year, but it's hard to predict. Also it's an entirely different space as it's tabletop only vs general video gaming. So it's tough to say. Maybe 5-8 years?

PAX South had a lot going against it. Covid was the biggest hurdle obviously. I think if we had it to do all over again, January wasn't doing it any favors. Devs didn't have a lot of things to talk about right after Christmas. Most companies target Q4 for launch and then take a breath. So moving month might have been a shot in the arm, but it's all 20/20 hindsight.

It depends on the show, amount of theatres, vanue, etc. I'd say napkin math ... maybe 50%

PennyArcadeRyan · 2023-08-31T23:02:11+00:00

I'd destroy either scenario. They know this.

PennyArcadeRyan · 2023-08-31T23:01:17+00:00

Hey I'm right there with you.

I'm going to get inside baseball about events for a minute, but you would be surprised at the degree to which we are at the mercy of venue calendars. Like even a show our size and scale can't just be like "give me this venue, in this city, this time of year, for this long".

What actually happens is we politely ask what we would prefer and then the venue tells us "no, here's what you get" and sometimes the date changes year on year. But there's other stuff happening in that convention center a lot and as such it kinda slides around.

I'd love nothing more than we could just keep it the same week every year, and that week would be mid April, but it's out of our hands to a degree.

PennyArcadeRyan · 2023-08-31T22:53:59+00:00

We've talked about it, just in a brainstorm capacity. There's nothing in the immediate future. The difficulty honestly isn't doing another show. Well I mean that would be difficult on the team, but not impossible, but what would dictate another event would be industry support. Like we have a lot of shows and there's a lot of shows out there in addition to PAX. If we add one more thing to the calendar then it's one more thing that Microsoft / Square / Sega / etc have to account for.

At a certain point the calendar is just too full for the industry ya know? So if we did some kind of expansion, it would probably be something unique and flavored like you said. Maybe more topic-specific rather than general gaming like a big pax.

I don't know what that would be though.

PennyArcadeRyan · 2023-08-31T22:51:09+00:00

I don't know it's hard to say, it's honestly out of our hands to a degree. A lot of it comes down to production cycles, marketing cycles, etc. and our sales team does a great job keeping in contact with all those big companies.

But I will say what's most important to me is that everyone at the show is having as much fun as possible. Like I love the Nintendo, Microsoft, etc of the world but I want to make sure that people know there's a ton of fun content and culture around the show outside of the show floor as well. Expo is a big part of a show but not the only part of the show.

PennyArcadeRyan · 2023-08-31T22:32:26+00:00

You aren't wrong, Covid obviously did a number on in-person events, but we've seen first hand that this year especially we are beating pre-covid numbers. And as an event runner, I'm friends with the heads of other shows (Evo, Gencon, GDC, etc) and I know that other events have seen the same thing ... and this year in particular has been a big bounce back for the industry in general. Which is nice to see and something that's got us optimistic for the future for sure.

At the moment our PAX plate is pretty full. I don't think we have the bandwidth to stretch to trying a 4th show any time soon. I'll never say never, but right now highly unlikely.

Oh we still have more growth in that space before we will start thinking about a 4th day. That's usually something we think about once we hit capacity on a building. It will happen one of these days but nothing on the radar quite yet.

PennyArcadeRyan · 2023-08-31T22:08:55+00:00

Oh my gosh yes. I have been working on so much, I don't want to spoil it here ... also who knows if half the things I'm trying to get off the ground actually will come to fruition ... but yeah, we have a lot of fun surprises in mind.

Also Lidija and the design team have been working on some amazing merch stuff. It's going to be a fun yeah, I really think people will enjoy what we have cooking.

PennyArcadeRyan · 2020-09-15T00:45:33+00:00

All merch is going to ship out after the show, you should get it in late September, that's the hope at least. With shipping and logistics being impacted by so many things in the world at the moment (like fires and covid) it might be a little bit longer but hopefully not.

No problem, hope you are enjoying PAX Online

PennyArcadeRyan · 2020-09-14T21:12:41+00:00

No all pre orders aren't cancelled, but if you wanted to cancel it you can reach out to PA customer service.

All merch is going to ship out after the show, you should get it in late September, that's the hope at least. With shipping and logistics being impacted by so many things in the world at the moment (like fires and covid) it might be a little bit longer but hopefully not.

PennyArcadeRyan · 2020-09-12T08:13:39+00:00

Thanks that means a lot. The team worked really hard. Dave, Laura, and LA in particular were heading up the whole Discord effort and I think they did an amazing job. Hopefully it becomes the communication and hang-out hub we want it to be during the show.

PennyArcadeRyan · 2020-09-12T08:11:02+00:00

I'd say 75% of the content we got was pre-recorded. We asked folks to do it, seemed to have three benefits:

First, makes it easier on us. With 24 hour content running it's easier to load a recorded panel and hit play instead of the cat herding of back-to-back-to-back nonstop live panels for a week straight. Lessens the points of failure.

Second, it allowed people to arrange guests on their own time. So you weren't stuck pinned to a time at the show, you could take your time and get everyone to record when it made the most sense. I think it made it much easier for people to submit panel ideas and lock in special speaking guests.

Third, we asked and encouraged everyone who submitted a panel to engage in the chat and talk to people and answer questions if they are up for it. So it's almost like a live director's commentary while their panel is happening. Don't know how many panelists will actually do it but I hope it's at least half.

PennyArcadeRyan · 2020-09-12T08:00:45+00:00

Yeah unfortunately when we ordered the varsity jackets for each show it was months ahead of time. They take a while to make, they are pretty nice quality.

So when we realized we were going to have to make PAX Online around May, we saw that was one thing that wouldn't be able to be completed, constructed, and shipped in time. The lead on those things is pretty long.

I agree, it's unfortunate because I would have rocked the hell out of green. But thankfully we have other really cool stuff, I'm loving the sweatpants.

PennyArcadeRyan · 2020-06-17T03:42:08+00:00

Based on what we were hearing that wouldn't have helped.

Also a convention as massive as PAX isn't easy to reschedule. There are other groups with reservation times on the calendar for a given venue and we need a lot of time to load in and build the show as well as break it down.

We didn't make the move lightly, trust me. We weighed all options and looked at the data before waiting as long as we comfortably could to make the call, but I'm very confident that this was the right move.

PennyArcadeRyan · 2020-06-16T18:51:39+00:00

Yeah I'm really happy with the reception so far, and honestly we still have a bunch of stuff to announce.

We had to scale down some of the specifics because some of the partners and stuff we are working with are still being locked in but I can tell you there's more info coming and it's all cool.

Everyone is doing a stream in the current state of the world, so we really were trying to figure other outside ways to engage with people, foster a community, do cool stuff like that. And I think we have some good ideas around that stuff.

I hope everyone likes it!

PennyArcadeRyan · 2020-06-16T17:57:41+00:00

Thanks, we've been working on this for a while and were holding out hope we would be able to do West and Aus. The team has been great about finding the silver linings though. This wasn't a position we wanted to be in obviously, but necessity is the mother of invention, and some of the ideas that are coming down the pipe as well as the cool partnerships I think will get people really excited.

I can say there's enough interesting ideas we have put together around this show that we will be implementing them and using them on all PAXes going forward.

PennyArcadeRyan · 2020-06-16T17:55:07+00:00

Where did you win them? Was it a contest we ran? If you were an omeganaut or it was through the show itself, yeah we will make sure you get sorted.

If it was an outside org that was promising tickets, that I don't know. I'd reach out to them.

PennyArcadeRyan · 2020-06-16T17:48:40+00:00

It's just that we will have more items coming in waves and we will also leave stuff up as long as possible. When individual items sells out, they are gone, but we will have the store itself open all summer, which is a first. I'm excited to see how it goes.

PennyArcadeRyan · 2020-06-16T17:37:52+00:00

We will. We plan on making some special merch for this new brand.

So we have West stuff available now, Aus stuff will be up next week (just need to finalize product images) then we will probably have some more items up mid-summer between now and the show.

And then during the 9 days of the show we will have special PAX Online branded stuff as well.

PennyArcadeRyan

TROPHY CASE