Even with three days this year's PAX was just not long enough for us to do and see everything. With a large exhibit hall, four different theaters devoted to panels and plenty of game tournaments going on, there just no way I would be able to do everything I set out to do. To make matters worse, I had a bunch of booth tours, game demonstrations, and interviews set up sucking even more time out of the already hectic schedule. But even though I was running around like a mad man I knew that there were a few things I absolutely had to see. I knew that I had to play Rock Band. I knew that I had to tell Larry "Major Nelson" Hyrb to get us on his show (something we do every time we see him). I knew that I had to watch the Wil Wheaton keynote speech. And I knew that I had to check out the "Innovation in Gaming" panel discussion.

The "innovation" panel was scheduled right after the Wil Wheaton keynote, so if I was going to make it in time I knew I would have to put on my running shoes and go from one side of the convention center to the other. This was complicated even further when I realized that Wil, the talker that he is, actually went over the allotted time and got me off to a late start. But that wasn't going to stop me from listening to the panelists talk about what they see as innovations in the game industry (and where we can go from here). I didn't even care that I was probably going to be the last person there and sitting as far back as the room would allow, I just wanted to see what the future held for us. But when I got to Theater C I realized that I wasn't the last person there ... in fact, I was the ONLY person there. Outside of the enforcers (PAX volunteer work force) I was the only person in the room, so I got a nice front row seat, got out my recording equipment, took some pictures, and prepared for a lively debate. Unfortunately there was to be no innovation in games ... apparently innovation was cancelled this year. In a year where all of the big games seem to be first-person shooters the cancellation of innovation in gaming feels like a giant metaphor for the entire games industry. Hopefully innovation will come back to PAX next year.

Let's be realistic here, Defunct Games is a small site. And by "small" I mean that we are smaller than GameSpot, 1up or IGN. With six years of articles and reviews on the site you could get lost just digging through our archives. But despite the thousands of pages of articles currently populating Defunct Games, there's one thing I know for sure ... it's near impossible for Defunct Games to have a fair fight against the juggernaut that is C-Net or Ziff Davis. That's why a convention like PAX is so important to Defunct Games, this is our opportunity to continue to spread the word and convince gamers that they should visit this site on a daily basis. To do this we employ a lot of guerilla tactics, we give out thousands of cards, we tell everybody that will listen about the site, we wear funny shirts that attract attention, and we generally make a scene. This tactic has helped us in the past and there's no reason for us to slow down our outside-of-the-box tactics.

This year we decided to highlight some of our more popular items, starting with our exclusive preview of Harmonix's Big Band. The reaction to Big Band was amazing, every single person we talk to about the game loved the concept and couldn't wait to get back to their hotel and read the full preview. Seeing how into Big Band everybody was, I decided to start telling people about another game we had previewed this year. Seeing how many people were excited about the Wii version of Rockstar Present Table Tennis, we decided to tell them about Rockstar Games Presents Lawn Darts. Thanks to a clever visual aid we had printed up before the event everybody ate it up and for awhile there people were actually calling us out by the name "lawn darts," it was disturbing and surreal all at the exact same time. But while I was happy to see people appreciate my work, Rockstar Games wasn't nearly as excited. This is a company who is spending the big bucks to promote their brand new Wii game and yet everybody is coming up to them and asking them about Lawn Darts. On Sunday when we checked in to see if Rockstar had any good schwag we were practically scolded by their PR department, they did not see the humor in Lawn Darts and felt that we were doing them a major disservice. But you know what, Lawn Darts is an excellent idea and they're just mad that we thought of it first. Considering that this is the company that delayed their biggest game of the year and decided to tone down parts of Manhunt 2 to get an M-Rating, I think they can stand to gain a sense of humor. Rockstar Games may not find Lawn Darts funny, but I don't think there's anything even remotely funny about a company being pussies and backing down from an ESRB fight. So, I guess we're even.

In the past years you needed an extra bag to haul back all of the schwag and knickknacks you picked up at E3. But this was not the case this time around; all I got were some shirts, a hat, and a Trauma Center pen that looks a lot like a syringe. While I was disappointed by the lack of goodies found at this year's small-scale E3, it more than made up for that being able to check out Rock Band, talk to the developers about Little Big Planet, and finally play God of War on the PSP. As I unloaded my bag of crap from E3 I quickly discovered that my favorite piece of schwag was that Trauma Center pen, I just love how there's liquid inside and it actually looks like something you would use in the game. It may only be a pen, but the name and the design makes it endearing.

Going into this year's PAX I thought that this Trauma Center pen was a one-of-a-kind design that I would proudly show off to everybody that came into the Defunct Games office. But I was wrong, because that exact same pen ended up showing up in connection to BioShock. By now most of us already know how amazing BioShock is, but part of me is disappointed that the game's schwag is nothing more than recycled Trauma Center pens. As you can tell from the picture the only difference is the name on the side of the pen. I suppose it's possible that this BioShock pen is older and that 2K Games is just trying to get rid of them at this point, but I'm always going to think of Trauma Center when I look at this pen because I got the Trauma Center version first. Perhaps this is a start of a style of pen, in a few years I will have a syringe pen for all of my favorite games, from Grand Theft Auto to Super Mario Bros. That's a day I'm not looking forward to.

This year there was a lot of talk about how PAX was the new E3. Everybody made a big deal about how there were so many people at this event and how the spirit of E3 has been transported to Seattle for the Penny Arcade Expo. While there are definitely some similarities, there are a few things keeping PAX from being everything the Electronic Entertainment Expo was back in its heyday. For one thing we don't have companies announcing new games and systems at the Penny Arcade Expo, and I can't go to PAX and pick up hundreds of issues of magazines. But the biggest difference is the games, while E3 featured games that were six months to a year off, the companies at PAX seem to want to use the convention to promote the games in their immediate future.

A good example of what I'm talking about is the Nintendo booth. While Nintendo has a massive line-up of games that people can't wait to play, they decided not to bring those titles. Instead they brought Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, a game that was released mere days after the event. And what about the new Nintendo DS Zelda game? Yup, that's coming in the next couple weeks, too. In fact, everything that was featured at the Nintendo booth was set to be released sometime in August or September, which is a far cry from what they had at E3 this year. And Nintendo wasn't the only one, booth after booth featured games that were only a few days from release, giving gamers an exclusive look a few hours earlier than everybody else. If PAX is going to be the new E3 (like everybody seems to say) then they are going to need to have some real announcements, until then this is going to be just another fun convention with a circus-like atmosphere.

When the Nintendo Wii was shown off at E3 2006 there were lines around the entire convention center of excited gamers looking to try out this new system for the very first time. People were willing to wait literally all day just to play five minutes of Wii Tennis and get a glimpse of Super Mario Galaxy. They didn't care that there was a full convention full of other games, they were focused on waggling that controller around to see if it was as revolutionary as Nintendo claimed. To call the Wii the winner of E3 would be a massive understatement, it steamrolled over the competition and made most of us completely forget that there were two other consoles vying for attention at that year's E3. Whether or not Nintendo has managed to live up to those expectations is debatable, but back in 2006 everybody was willing to believe that Nintendo could do no wrong and that this simple motion-detecting control was the future of video gaming.

Flash forward a few months and the Wii is out and everybody is off looking for the next big thing. When I first saw Rock Band at E3 I knew that the game was going to impress a lot of people, but I wasn't sure just how into it people would be. With only three or four thousand attendees at E3 it was hard to gauge how popular the product was, there wasn't a huge line like there was for the Wii. But PAX helped me understand just how excited people are about this brand new Harmonix game. While the line for Rock Band never reached the same level as the Wii in 2006, there was definitely a sizable wait just to get your hands on one (and only one) instrument. The problem was that a quick survey of the two hour line exposed that most people were waiting to play the drums, yet only one in every four people would get a chance to play the drums (the other three people would have to sing, play guitar or bass). Even knowing that, people were willing to stand in line for hours waiting to pretend to play rock songs. This suggests to me that Rock Band has the kind of mass market appeal that Nintendo was able to tap into a year ago. It may not hit Wii-like sales figures, but I think it's safe to say that Rock Band is this year's Wii. It's a device that everybody wants to try out ... even if that means they have to stand in line for hours just to play a four minute long song. No other game even came close to matching that kind of fervor; I think it's safe to say that Rock Band was the game of the show at this year's PAX. That's not to say that everybody is going to run out and pay $200 for the full package, but if you think this game is going to fail at the store level then you need to get your head out of the sand and take a look at the line at PAX.