Before I left for PAX East the part I was anticipating the most was the expo hall.  I felt that this would be the closest that someone like me could get to an E3 type experience.  Once it was over I realized that when I go to PAX Prime in September, the expo hall will be the last thing I’ll look forward to.

To even have a booth at PAX is at least some recognition that it’s important to reach out to fans, and while Ubisoft and Rockstar had some impressive showings, if you had the opportunity to see some of the other booths, you’d be sorely disappointed.

Probably the saddest example was the Sega “booth.”  I’ve seen Rosetta Stone kiosks at the mall that were bigger than this.  Four monitors and a few DS systems set up where you could play games like…Bayonetta, which was released about three months ago.  You could go to one of the freeplay rooms and play the full retail version of Bayonetta, and even get to sit down while doing it.  Not one picture or video of upcoming games like Sonic 4 or Alpha Protocol, although they did do a panel on the latter. 

Another sad example was the Nintendo booth.  Although this one was a bit bigger, you only had the opportunity to play Pokemon SoulSilver and HeartGold, both already released, Picross 3D, and a downloadable DSi title called Photo Dojo where you can take pictures of yourself and put them in a fighting game, Mortal Kombat style. 

Again, not even a video or mention of huge games which are right around the corner, like Super Mario Galaxy 2, which is coming out prior to E3, or Metroid: Other M.  We know there are playable builds of these games that the press had the opportunity to try.  Even a trailer for Metroid came out a day after PAX ended, but it didn’t cross Nintendo’s mind that they could debut it there for the fans?  Why does the gaming industry trust the press but not the public? 

I’d like to say this is a pretty archaic way of thinking, but for years movie studios have had early screenings of films, including very rough cuts where scenes and effects are missing.  This practice didn’t stop in the age of the internet where someone can run home and email a movie fan site to tell the world about what they saw, so that shouldn’t be an excuse for the gaming industry.

So why are there so few “early public screenings” for games?  The expo hall at PAX certainly wasn’t a free-for-all environment where you just walk up to a game and play.  There were plenty of opportunities to try new games, from small indie studios to large publishers, but all had someone standing there to “hold your hand” through it, answering questions and telling you about the game while you played, so there was no risk of someone walking away from a game ready to spout bad things about it just because they didn't understand how to play it.  They can also get valuable feedback as to what is working and not working with the game.  After all, a key reason that public screenings are used for films is to improve them.  A crowd like the one at PAX is intelligent enough to understand the flaws of an early build, even if a few bad apples did try to steal them…

It seems like it’s going to take years until some understand that this is a great chance to get word of mouth advertising and free hype that doesn’t come through the filter of the press, along with valuable feedback.  Then there are some like Nintendo that will probably never “get it.”  For now we should be thankful for those that are admirable enough to reach out to the public and give us the opportunity to play some early builds of games that usually only the press gets to see.