I had a great time, learned a lot, met cool people, had my mind blown several times, and embarrassed myself in a multiplayer Castle Crashers game by hitting the wrong buttons on the game controller. (Hey, I roll old school, all right? In my day we had ONE joystick with ONE button, and we LIKED it that way.)

Over the course of this week I'm going to post about what I saw and heard, but first I wanted to let you know that Major Nelson of the Xbox Live team has uploaded audio of the excellent "Blogphotopodcasting: New Media in the Game Industry" panel. The first part is up now, and with this sort of turnaround, I expect that the second part will be up tomorrow. (Gamerscore Blog has good photos of the event.)


Fig. 1 - Mario orders his legions of Nintendo DS users to rise up and seize power

At some point you'll hear me ask the panelists what advice they have for a marketing and PR agency who wants to "get it" and work well with them. I thought that this was a pretty urgent question, given the hostility that nearly all of the panelists expressed toward PR firms and their clumsy attempts to force their messages onto the blogpodosphere. DEAR PR AGENCIES: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, LISTEN TO THESE PEOPLE.

You will also hear me stumble over the word "agency" as I try to take the microsophone from Major Nelson without tripping over someone's bag. Man, I was really firing on all cylinders at this show.


Tags: Penny Arcade Expo, PAX06, Xbox, Castle Crashers, aging gamers, Major Nelson, new media