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Walking the floor at PAX 2010, everyone seemed familiar to me. I'm a gamer from way back, so in a way, these are my people. I know what they look like. I know how they dress. They are an incredibly diverse and wickedly smart crowd, but I know them, I grew up with them, many of them are my friends.
But one thing did surprise me: Everyone at PAX was incredibly happy!
Really. I know you wouldn't think this right? Most people have a stereotypical image of gamers as these sun-deprived, pale-skinned adrenaline junkies with a taste for Red Bull and processed snack foods. This, of course, is not completely unfounded. Maybe it was the critical mass of gaming excitement, but everyone I passed was smiling. They grinned as they stood in two-hour lines. They apologized with charm if they stepped on your foot because they were staring at the massive Lord of the Rings statue. They cheered each other on during grueling game tournaments. They even laughed with a manic glee as they grabbed a quick game while eating lunch on the floor. It was great!
Here are my 10 reasons to love PAX:
Reason 1: Gamers!
Reason 2: The massive Lord of the Rings statue that everyone stopped paying attention to when the game started.
Reason 3: Just another day at the office.
Reason 4: Grabbing a quick game on the floor during lunch.
Reason 5: Mario!
Reason 6, Part 1: Having a good time with friends playing TRON Evolution the video game.
Reason 6, Part 2: Having a good time with friends watching TRON Evolution the video game.
Reason 7: Dude your dealer has horns!
Reason 8: Family photo
Reason 9: Yikes!
Reason 10: These girls had to lead around the diver as if he was blind.
Bonus: Riding the escalator home behind a ten-year-old Pikacho.
Brian David Johnson
Futurist and Director, Future Casting and Experience Research
Intel Corporation
The future is Brian David Johnson's business. As a futurist at Intel Corporation his charter is to develop an actionable vision for computing in 2020. His work is called "future casting" - using ethnographic field studies, technology research, trend data and even science fiction to provide Intel with a pragmatic vision of consumers and computing. Along with reinventing TV, Johnson has been pioneering development in artificial intelligence, robotics, and using science fiction as a design tool. He speaks and writes extensively about future technologies in articles and scientific papers as well as science fiction short stories and novels (Fake Plastic Love, Nebulous Mechanisms: The Dr. Simon Egerton Stories and the forthcoming This Is Planet Earth). He has directed two feature films and is an illustrator and commissioned painter.
