In this podcast, Edmar plays intrepid roving-reporter for BASHandSlash.com and travels to Boston to attend Penny Arcade’s PAX East nerd-tacular.
PAX East
For those of you who don’t know what PAX is, it’s short for Penny Arcade Expo. It was conceived around 2004 by the guys who write the Penny Arcade webcomic.
The first show started out in Washington initially and then it expanded to the east coast in 2010 when they brought it to Boston. The show in Boston became known as PAX East and in the past, it has drawn tens of thousands of fans.
In Edmar’s report he goes over a few of the main elements in PAX that make it the gamer-centric conference it is:
- About PAX: http://paxsite.com/.
- Exclusively for gaming…for the gamers!
- Tabletop included.
- Console freeplay area.
- Handheld lounge.
- Classic arcade room.
- Tournaments.
- Freeplay Area.
- Concerts.
- Panels
- INSTA-COMMUNITY.
Natural Selection 2
You may remember us talking to Charlie Cleveland back in 2010 on BASH 157. Looks like Charlie and the gang are getting set to spring NS2 on us. Edmar caught up with his dev crew over at PAX East. Check out their latest video for the game:
Ravaged
Ravaged, by 2DawnGames, is in the middle of a crowd-sourcing run on Kickstarter.com. Visit Kickstarter and send 2Dawn some love.
Wargaming Interview with Victor Kislyi
Victor Kislyi is the CEO of Wargaming.net. Wargaming is a company based in London and its main development studio is in Belarus. Wargaming started out as a strategy game development company in 1998 and since then it has made it big.
Real big.
Victor Kislyi the CEO recently talked about having 20 million users in World of Tanks and they’re now making about 2 million bucks a month – the game launched in Russia back in only 2010.
- Edmar got to meet with Victor during PAX East and they shared some treats (see pic).
- Wargaming Synopsis:
- 120 -> 800 devs in 18 months
- 3 titles in production: complement each other…fast, medium, more tactical/calculated. Games not competing with each other. Use one game’s xp in other game.
- Best Decisions: no publisher
- Worst Decision: no USA presence
- Guiding Principles: Be professional. Be transparent. Be kind. Don’t be greedy.
- I asked how they keep design consistent and he said that since Tanks doesn’t need the same design support anymore the leads can move to other projects and jump back as needed.
- They do well enough with about 30% of players making purchases in game, compared to Zynga which has 1-2% of players paying…so no need to charge more. He regularly denies design ideas that would encourage more spending. 1-2 movie tickets/month is the sweet point.
- Future:
- cross franchise play?
- consoles
World of Warplanes
- Optimized graphics and effects for plane battles. 15v15. Full joystick support.
- Dog fighting and ground objectives
- Expect fun environments…hinted at cities such as NY!
- Planes: 1930’s to Korean War including planes based on actual blueprints that were never made production. No missiles.
- Ranked battles / tournaments
- Cross vehicle play may be in the future…maybe in a year. 5-10 year plan for the franchise.
Check out these exclusive PAX East screen shots:
WoT’s just recently celebrated a year in business and who doesn’t celebrated with a catered, all-you can drink, music-thundering, hot-chicks shakin’-what-they-got, partayy?
You can bet the Vodka was flowing at this Wargaming shin-dig! Thanks to Edmar and his cracker-jack reporting, we get to hear all about it, cuz he was invited to it thanks to Victor and he’s got the scene evidenced through his phone’s camera. Blurry, underexposed, but it’s evidence dammit!
Thanks to Arthur, Victor and all the good folks at Wargaming for inviting us into their inner sanctum and getting to talk-the-talk with them. Congrats on the one year anniversary of WoT and we cannot wait for the Beta of World of Warplanes. I’m warming up my joystick as I speak.
As a special bonus, Edmar and I will be giving away WoT gold to our listeners. Thanks to Wargaming.net for providing us with the bullion. Here’s how you can get in on it:
1. For Edmar’s WoT gold, listen to the podcast.
2. For my WoT gold, watch my Twitter stream in the next few days: twitter.com/bashandslash
The code you will see is for WoT gold. You have to register at WoT to use it.
Log in to your profile and enter the code I tweet.
