This past weekend Aaron and I went to
MAGFest, a gaming and music convention held at the National Harbor. It was
awesome! Just to avoid confusion, I should let you know that we used our
timeshare points to stay at nearby Wyndham, instead of paying $176 a night
(including resort fee, tax, and parking) to stay at the Gaylord where the
convention was held. But I’ll post about Wyndham later.
The
convention was definitely geared towards console gaming, but it did
have something for any type of gamer. They had a huge convention hall
open 24 hours that was divided into 5 sections: marketplace, open tabletop
gaming, LAN area, free arcade, and console gaming. We spent the majority of our
time in the arcade and the marketplace, but we played some in the console
gaming area too.
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| Sitting in the tabletop gaming area with the marketplace behind us. Yes, that car has ears and a tail. |
The marketplace was not what I expected. They had 2 or more vendors for each of the following: console games, t-shirts, music, Japanese candy and caffeine drinks, perler bead art, jewelry, and hats. The first three were expected, of course. Candy and caffeine made sense once I thought about it. But I was pleasantly surprised on how many vendors were selling handmade stuff, and that most of those vendors were women. Sadly I am not really interested in perler bead art or hats. And really, how many hat vendors do you need? Certainly not 4 or more. To be fair, we did buy a perler art photo frame of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet, but I still think there was too many perler beaded art vendors. On the other side of the coin, only one vendor was selling boardgames. And I didn't see any computer games for sale. I feel like there was something else missing from the vendor area too, but I just can’t think of what it might be.
Tabletop gaming had a separate
tournament room in addition to the open gaming area, but it mostly held Magic
the Gathering tournaments. I was happy to at least see a Settlers of Catan
tournament and an Apples to Apples tournament on the schedule, but we didn't go
to either one. They also had a tournament for Scrabble, Poker, Dominion,
Warhammer 40k, and two WoW CCG raids.
We managed to make it to a few of
the panels. I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the
panelists and discussions. Most conventions I've attended have had cool
sounding panels that end up being really boring. Maybe we
just lucked out on picking good panels this time, but every panel we
went to was really enjoyable. I even liked the panel about text-based
games, which I've never understood until attending the panel.
The charity auction
was hysterical to watch, even though they didn't have anything that
interested me. It is the only auction I've seen that auctioned off
"mystery items," had dueling auctioneers that exclaimed stuff like
“shit balls!”, and threw lanyards into the audience. The auction was scheduled
for 11:00AM to 3:00PM, but they didn’t get started until around 11:30 due to
technical difficulties with setting up to take credit cards. We watched the
action for an hour, and then had to go get lunch. I told Aaron we could come
back to the auction after lunch, but he was sure they would be done early.
After all, we had already seen several mystery items sold for $5 to the first
few people to raise their hands. We arrived back to the auction before 2:00,
and it was still going strong. At one point they threw 20 mystery items in a
bag and proceeded to auction it off. Even with an endorsement of “some of these
items have already sold for $20” and “it’s for charity” how much do you think a
bag of unknown objects would sell
for? As the bid climbed, the auctioneers actually started shoving more items
into the bag. The final bid was $210 for a mystery bag of gamer crap. I guess gamers
have money and like to spend it. Aaron and I left the auction at 3:10. It still
wasn’t over, but it was finally starting to wind down.
I was surprised at how many musical
guests there were. When I started reading their bios, I realized that they are
all part of a genre of music that I had never heard of – gamer music. I
understand part of the concept, since video games can have amazing music, but the
word “chiptune” came up a lot. So at one point we decided to head over to a
chiptune concert to find out what it was about. Unfortunately you’ll have to
google chiptune for yourself, because we didn’t even make it in the door. The
concert area didn’t allow bags inside. Aaron carried around a bag for me all
weekend that held my water and snacks. That day I was also wearing my pregnancy
pants without pockets, so the bag also held my money, ID, etc. So there was no
way I was leaving the bag outside in the hallway like everyone else. We skipped
the chiptune concert, made a mental note of the bag policy, and planned to
leave the bag in our hotel room for the Earthbound Papas concert.
The Earthbound Papas is the current
band of the musician who created the music for most of the Final Fantasy games.
So they were the biggest guest at the convention, and were scheduled to perform
on Saturday at 10:00PM to midnight. We deliberately planned to leave the
convention for a late dinner on Saturday, stop by our hotel and drop off our bag,
and then be back at the convention for the concert. At 9:30 we were headed to
the concert as planned. “Where is it located?” Aaron asked. “Um, probably where
everyone is headed,” I replied as we followed a long line of people all heading
in the same direction. We ended up in a huge, dark, convention room that held a
stage at the far end. The previous band was still playing, and the mass of
people filled about 1/3 of the room. There were no chairs, and the wall space
was pretty well filled already with people sitting. We couldn’t really see the
stage since the front of the room was already packed, and it was at least a
half hour before the concert even started. “I’m not going to be able to stand
here the whole time,” I told Aaron. We decided to leave. While Aaron headed to
the restroom, I sat down in a chair in the hallway leading to the concert.
Instead of a steady line of people, there was now a steady mass of people
heading to the concert. Aaron joined me, and we sat there and people-watched
for several minutes. Although I had wanted to see the concert, there was no way
I was going back. It looked like nearly all 3,000 attendees were going to try
to cram into that room. It was not going to be a good place for a pregnant
lady. And then it dawned on me: if everyone is attending the concert, the
arcade and console gaming areas are going to be empty! Although we were both
tired, we headed downstairs. For the first time all weekend, we got to play
console games and some of the more popular arcade games!
That’s when I started to realize
that being pregnant at a gamer convention was interesting. The schedule was
light on morning panels and heavy with evening panels, going as late as 3:00 in
the morning! I was pushing it to even attempt to attend the 10:00pm concert. So
at first, I was disappointed that I couldn’t stay up and party with the gamers.
But I quickly realized that while the gamers were sleeping in, the arcade was
pretty empty in the mornings. By evening (except during the Earthbound Papas
concert) the arcade was packed. And in a cavernous concrete room, the noise
became unbearable! Sunday morning was awesome. Not only were the gamers
sleeping in, but many were also busy checking out of the hotel, or attending
the Earthbound Papas Q&A. The arcade and console areas were the least
crowded that I had seen them all weekend. You’d think I’d know by now that
doing the opposite of everybody else has its advantages, but sometimes I just
forget.
I had two realizations over the
weekend. One was “My parents were right,” and the other, “My husband is
awesome.” Of course I already knew these things. But I had one (err, two) of
those moments when the truth just smacks you in the face.
When I was growing up, I always
wanted an Atari system. Ever since I saw the neighbor boys playing Pitfall, I’ve
always wanted to play Pitfall (and still haven’t). But my wise parents didn’t
get us Atari. We got the TI-99/4a instead. My parents said it was better than
the Atari because it was an actual computer. I wouldn’t listen because I
couldn’t play Pitfall on the TI. This weekend, there was an Atari set up in
front of a couch in the arcade. They didn’t have Pitfall. But they did have
Space Invaders, and I played it a few times. On the TI, we had TI Invaders, and
it was one of my favorite games. Now obviously, Space Invaders was the
original, and TI Invaders was copied from it, so I have to give props to Space
Invaders. But TI Invaders was still way cooler. Besides having more color, and
in my opinion, better game play in general, TI Invaders had a bonus round
between boards. In the bonus round, you shot at the UFO. Each time you hit it,
the value would increase, the size of the UFO would decrease, it would change
directions, and its speed would increase. The point was to volley it back and
forth across the screen gaining bonus points until it disappeared completely or
it escaped off the screen.
Another favorite game was Alpiner,
where you climbed mountains and avoid hazards like bears and falling rocks.
This game actually had speech and taunted you when you made mistakes. The
climber would say “onward and upward,” at the start of a climb, “yuck!” when
you ran into something, and “helllllllllp” when you fell. A lady would say
things like “look out!” or “beware, falling objects,” when there were falling
rocks. And she’d taunt you with, “Did you mean to do that?” after you fell to
the bottom of the mountain.
Alpiner was awesome. I asked Aaron
if any Atari games had speech. He looked at me like I had a third eye and said,
“No, it wasn’t a computer.” Did I ever use the TI for anything other than
gaming? Only once that I recall. In 7th grade I took my first
computer class and learned a little Basic programming. I tried it on our TI
machine and created a picture after a ridiculous amount of wait time. Even just
using it as a gaming system, I really enjoyed playing my favorite games, and I
kind-of miss them. I haven’t played anything on the Atari that comes close,
except for Pitfall in my mind. But now I’d much rather have a TI machine to
play my old 4 favorite games than to have an Atari to play Pitfall.
So that was the “My parents were
right” moment. And while thinking fondly about my TI games, I decided to call
my parents to see if they still have the old TI-99/4a stashed somewhere. I explained that we were attending a gaming
convention, and Mom said, “Oh, Aaron must be having more fun than you.” Even
though I was on the phone, I made the face at her that said, “What on Earth are
you talking about?” But I just said, “No, I think we are having equal fun.” The
conversation made me wonder why Aaron should be having more fun than me. I like
games. Eventually I pictured what might happen if I was at the convention with
some other guy. He’d be playing everything that he would want to, whether I
wanted to play or not. Most likely I wouldn’t want to play the same thing, and
I’d end up watching or trying to find something to play by myself. Would we even
go to panels? Probably not. So yeah, with another guy, I might be completely
bored at best. But not with Aaron. He likes to play games with me. Most of the time, we picked 2-player games. If we ended up
at a 1-player game, we’d take turns*. We played a lot of Frogger, because it
was my favorite, and it was one of the few arcade games we could sit at to
play. I picked out the panels, but got his input as much as possible, and he
happily went to them. Even though he was really enjoying himself at the charity
auction, he had no problem leaving to get lunch. And he carried around my
backpack all weekend without complaint. Aaron really is an awesome husband. I
did play Rampage with him twice until my wrist and fingers hurt, and I was
supportive when he wanted to buy something at the auction. And I picked out
panels that I thought he’d enjoy, like the one about text-based gaming that I
knew nothing about. So hopefully we did have equal fun.
*And when I said we took turns on
1-player games, I don’t mean that one of us played all three lives of a game
for a turn, making the other person wait forever. We switched each time we
died, or when we reached the end of a board. Sometimes we let the other person
play a second time in a row if they died right at the start of their turn.
More pics at http://hooppics.shutterfly.com/12774.
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| Playing Frogger! |
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