PAX: Not Quite A Trade Show

I see a certain number of people referring to PAX as a trade show these days, implicitly countering the idea that it’s an enthusiast event. It’s a sentiment I agree with, but only about halfway, and I think it’s reductionist to keep talking about the convention in these terms. To be clear, even if PAX was a trade show that wouldn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s important that we frame instances of marketing as such, and not mistake them for the same thing as other people sharing an unbiased interest in works of art or entertainment with us. One of the classic problems of “nerd culture” is that loyalty towards certain brands and enthusiasm for certain art/entertainment have in many areas blurred into one.

And you can see why people might define PAX as an event intended to promote brands. There’s something rather E3 about the spectacle of the Overwatch or Firefall presence we've seen there, while streams have featured wall-to-wall adverts for computer parts and popular MOBAs. Plus, it’s not just the AAA studios getting involved; the desire to promote a product runs all the way down to the Indie Megabooth. In some ways PAX is for indies what E3 is for AAAs. They’re not exactly equivalent types of promotion obviously: independent artists tend to be able to get closer to their audience without a lot of flashy marketing in the way, and tend to be less about profiteering and more about just getting food on their plate, but in both cases these people are there in no small way because they want you to buy a product.

That being said, there are also plenty of panels on topics like how to use games as educational tools, romances in games, getting into livestreaming, etc. There’s no product being sold there. Of course, you can argue that concerts, tournaments for decades-old games, and other similar events still encourage people towards buying something. Maybe because you went to the Smash Bros. 64 tournament you want to pick up the newest Smash Bros. or maybe because you saw the Protomen concert you’re more likely to buy a Protomen album. There's truth in this idea, but it doesn't mean that these are marketing events. A very strong component of such corners of PAX is to entertain people for the sake of it, providing enjoyment without just trying to use that as a proxy for getting people to lay down cold, hard cash. Even in panels where creators talk about their current or upcoming games, I think there's an earnest attempt to impart information and personal experiences for the sake of sharing something people might enjoy and learn from. They're not just trying to boost sales. Collectively, all of these moments where PAX isn't about selling items add up to create something that we cannot reliably call a "trade show", even if we can acknowledge it has trade show elements.

Reducing PAX to being “a trade show” or “not a trade show” makes it easy to understand, and in some cases may impart the feeling that you’re smart enough to see the strings other people aren’t, but I really do think it’s more complicated than that. One reason it’s important to understand the makeup of PAX is that that mix of trade show and enthusiast event may affect how we process the show’s contents. While gamers are in general too quick to embrace attempts to market at them, at least many of us can point at a trade show and go “We know we have to take this with a grain of salt, it’s clearly marketing”. However, when we have this mix of hobbyist and promotional event, there are dangers in ignoring either side of that combination. If we see PAX as a purely enthusiast event, we become naive about attempts to market at us, and it’s easier to do that when the genuinely hobbyist elements of PAX may help promoters trojan in marketing elements, tricking us into thinking they're the same thing. At the same time, ignoring that there are legitimate attempts to inform and entertain in PAX, beyond marketing products, closes us off to a lot of that information and entertainment, and pushes back at important attempts to view video games as more than just products. Thanks for reading.